


Dusk Lily

by chipperdyke



Category: Mass Effect, Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Baby Shiara is the cutest, But Archive warnings are real, F/F, Lesbian Character of Color, Magical Pregnancy, Maybe more story than porn oops, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Mind Rape, Non-Human Genitalia, Unrequited Love, not a slow burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-30
Updated: 2018-05-02
Packaged: 2018-09-20 23:07:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 18
Words: 50,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9520046
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chipperdyke/pseuds/chipperdyke
Summary: In the visions of the beacons, Shepard's body was torn and burnt. Her face was laid bare to the skull. Liara watched her as she fought on, mangled, both dead and alive - having lost everything, including herself.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Explicit content in future chapters. There are two rape scenes. Both are not physical. The first occurs off-camera before the story starts, and the second is in Chapter 15. I have endeavored to treat them very seriously.
> 
> Canon warning: I am not doing research to ensure perfect canon, and I am definitely interpreting melding/mating. I will stay internally consistent, however. Sorry for any jarring incongruities.
> 
> Un-beta-ed, so all mistakes are mine. If you'd like to beta this - please let me know!

Shepard had thought she came for the alien thrill of it, the experience of fucking an asari. She heard that if you were lucky, the orgasm would be longer and more intense. She wanted to know what an asari’s cunt felt like, whether the shape was the same as her own. She had planned to apologize afterward and tell Liara that despite how it had felt, it was just meaningless sex.

But afterwards, she could not even speak. She fled Liara's makeshift office, the small nook that they could find apart from the others, and Liara lay on the cold metal floor for a long time, exploring the contours of the commander's selfhood. She had not seen everything, but she had seen enough to have an adequate reading, to see what Shepard had planned and to understand Liara's role in that. Liara had never held onto a meld for so long, and never during orgasm.

Shepard would recover from her shock. And she would return, if only because she had already fucked the navigations officer and found her unexciting, and Ashley Williams had rejected her already twice. So it was important not to overwhelm Shepard. Liara would wait for Shepard to come back to her.

Liara had sensed in Shepard eagerness at her arrival at the ship, a certain sweaty expectation. Shepard had been sure to check on Liara's health, though she was brief with the other crew, and they held their heads down after saluting her - hoping that she would not speak further to them - hoping that they had not done anything worthy of reprimand. Shepard had sat with Liara to eat, though she ate little and was clearly not hungry. And she had grasped Liara's hand, leaning over the table, in an attitude of intimacy. Kaidan had rounded the corner of the mess table and then rolled his eyes and turned back around when he found them like that, but Shepard did not notice. Liara had leaned forward, too. She hungered for Shepard, having barely met her. Shepard was magnetic, snapping power and purpose. Perfect.

Shepard was entirely overt in her pursuit of Liara, which was why, afterward, her transformation in attitude was so marked. She did not look at Liara for nearly a week.

Finally, one day they passed each other in a corridor and their hands almost touched, close enough that Liara could feel her warmth. Without thinking, Liara pulled on her impression. She wanted to keep it, in case Shepard did not come back to her. Another asari would let it go, but Liara was far too compelled by the fierce beauty of Shepard's mind, by her warmth and her coldness. She was fascinated from the start, and having melded with her one time, Liara only wanted to know more, to meld for longer, to take Shepard over and over. To paint in the details, make the picture bigger. To perfect Shepard's selfhood in Liara's mind, so that she could draw on it more deeply. Liara had already decided that her daughter would be Shepard's.

Perhaps it was an impulsive move, the move of a child. Certainly this was poor timing, with her mother threatening the galaxy’s stability - Liara should wait until she was unneeded, and now she was actually needed for the first time. But she was mated, too, for the first time, and her resolve was complete. Everything had changed. Rather than studying the Protheans, Liara spent hours cataloguing Shepard, caressing each detail of her, the precise clarity of her decision-making, the sweep of her hair, the curve of her thumb, the thrill she felt in the kill, her definition of loyalty and of defiance. Shepard was perfect.

 _Whore spider bloodsucking flea_ , Shepard thought.

Liara turned her body to follow Shepard's, and Shepard turned and looked at her.

“What did you just do?” Shepard asked sharply. Her voice grated.

Liara could not look away from Shepard's eyes, sparkling in the blue ship lights. She was tingling from the partial connection, longing for the closer one. It was not enough to study what she had, or to examine her from afar. Would Shepard let her draw her close? Liara did not care that they were in the corridor.

She reached out to touch Shepard's face, and Shepard stepped back, into the bulkhead.

With the distance, Liara remembered the stream of denigration that Shepard had been thinking. So that was what drove Shepard away. Liara's heart shattered.

“Well?” Shepard spat. Her eyes were baleful, dull, distant. Liara remembered her sweet gasping, the rock of her hips into Liara. She could almost feel Shepard's hard nipple in her mouth. “Will you tell me what you did? Did you just steal - are you draining me?”

“No,” Liara choked.

“You don't just _do_ that to people. Do you get that?”

Liara shook her head. Shepard was implying a lack of consent on her part. But Shepard had come to her. She had intended to use Liara - she had been eager to find such an innocent woman. She had hoped that Liara would fall in love with her, so that she could sleep with her without excessive effort. It was better when they loved Shepard. Shepard did not mind the drama afterward - it was par for the course, a mild irritant. What Shepard wanted was to dominate, to see a woman in frustrated longing, wracked with tantalization, shaking with the release that only Shepard could give her. She wanted a cunt rippling under her fingers.

“Don't grab my hand and syphon me. Don't use me. Leave me alone.”

Liara nodded her assent. “You came to me,” she whispered. “And I do love you.” Did Shepard know how thoroughly Liara had known her? How each sketched detail had drawn Liara deeper? Shepard had never shared a soft touch that was not amorous, that was not driven toward sex. Liara would give her that - would give her everything, everything that was missing - everything that Shepard did not know she needed. That was what Liara had planned.

Shepard scoffed. “I don't want you and your freak mind fucking shit. I wasn't looking to be dissected by you. Get over it and don't ever touch me again.”

Liara nodded, and Shepard turned on her heel and left her there.


	2. Chapter 2

Kaiden's hand was heavy on Liana’s neck. It was ungloved, warm, and although their bodies were separated by thick layers of synthetic fabric, she could tell he was sweating because a layer of it was sticky between their skin. He was big and reminded her of Jade, long ago, sweet fumbling Jade. 

She huddled against the interior of the Mako and comforted herself with the thought. They were both strapped in, and the Mako rumbled and jostled them. Shepard was not a good driver, or maybe just a careless one.

The Mako’s machine gun rumbled, sounding far away. It was Tali, in the gunnery, but Liara thought of Shepard first. Shepard would be leaning forward, bloodthirsty and feeling helpless. She always did, when she drove. When she was in a fight and unarmed. 

The Moko lurched backward and then swung around, jostling Kaiden against Liara. He pulled away from the movement, sparing her from the weight of him, but his hand on her neck tightened unconsciously, digging into her skin. 

There was a shout up front, and the gunnery swung wildly. Explosives rocked the Mako’s hull, and then Liara heard the release of a rocket. A distant boom followed, and then another. The Mako lurched forward again. 

A short time later, Liara heard the hatch depress. Kaiden unstrapped himself, and then her - so they would move with the strike team. Liara’s hands were bound, making it harder to navigate through to the front of the Mako, and then down the hatch to the frozen ground. Kaiden was patient with her, helping where he could.

She couldn't see Shepard when they finally emerged. A tall wall faced them, and she quickly found the entrance with her eyes. She looked at Kaiden, and he nodded, so she moved toward it. The frost was already seeping through her thick jumpsuit.

As the second airlock opened, a few bullets rattled against the ground near her feet. She fell against the far side of the airlock, and Kaiden stayed standing. He pushed, the air rippling before him, and then he pulled her back upright and out of the airlock. 

They crouched together behind boxes. There was a deep grunt, and the sound of bullets connecting with flesh. Kaiden looked at Liara, and then impulsively spun into a shooting position over the crate, looking sheepish already. He worried more for his squad than her betrayal. She was not sure if that meant that he trusted her, but decided it didn't matter.

Liara leaned over to peek around the other side of the crate. 

Shepard was there, helmeted. Her combat suit left her body distinct, and Liara remembered the flat and unnarrow torso, the lankiness. Shepard's body looked like one that would build out well, athletic, but she was more skinny than athletic now. Too many missions, Shepard thought. Not enough time in real gravity, on a capital ship. Too many reports, to too many different people. Her muscles atrophied quickly. She did not have time to work them.

She strafed the stairs, and then pulled behind one of the pillars. Her eyes met Liara’s through the clear facemask, standard in the Alliance. This was the first time since the corridor that she looked at Liara, and Liara's heart stirred. The impression stirred too, deep in her belly. She would lose it - soon, now. She couldn't keep this child, taken without consent. Moreover, what would Shepard do if she found out? She imagined telling Shepard that it was nothing, just a way to reproduce - that nothing was really taken, that it was not really hers. 

Shepard might kill her if she found out. Still, to lose it was not what Liara wanted. When she looked at Shepard she wanted to keep that part of her close. She would not have Shepard again.

How to best love her? She asked to be left alone. Liara should love her by honoring her request, not by clinging harder. If she kept this baby, it would be to keep Shepard. And to lose it was losing Shepard all over again. Her daughter with Shepard's throaty laugh, with the curved thumb and flashing eyes. Shepard hated writing but loved data, and her daughter would love both. She would be impetuous but diligent. She would laugh at authority, not rebelliously as Shepard sometimes did, but with the confidence that a comfortable childhood grants - the confidence that Shepard would never truly feel, no matter how much power she earned and leveraged.

But Liara's daughter deserved the chance to be more than a representation of a love, found and then lost as quickly. She could not keep the baby.

Shepard broke their eye contact, spinning back around the pillar, and bullets pinged off her shield. Her rifle spat, and Liara could almost feel the kick back against her shoulder, a lullaby to Shepard. It meant security. That was the comfort that Shepard knew.

Finally there was silence. Kaiden slithered back down the crate, and Liara did too. They sat there, backs against the crate, for a long moment.

“She saw us,” Kaiden whispered. 

“Definitely,” Liara said. Shepard's gaze had never left Liara, but she must have seen Kaiden, too. 

“Stand, Lieutenant Alenko!” Shepard barked. 

Kaiden put his hand, dry now, against Liara's neck and pulled her up with him. 

“You are to watch the asari, only!” Shepard said. She was close, and came closer, standing within an inch of his chest. She was as tall as him and darker through the face mask. “I cannot fight with an unknown at my back. Understood?”

“Yessir,” Kaiden said stiffly. 

“Blindfold her,” she added, turning. Her eyes never met Liara's, and Liara could not tell if she meant to hurt her. Did Shepard avoid her, or was she beneath attention? Surely it was not the latter. Shepard needed her, at least for now - a hostage, while dealing with Liara’s mother. Nobody had told her, but it was obvious. Why else would she be here?

Kaiden pulled out a strip of synthetic fiber, doubtless brought for the purpose, tied it around Liara’s eyes, and led her carefully through the maze of corridors. Liara could hear explosions and firefights, never too close. Sometimes the squad doubled back, brushing past Kaiden and Liara, and they followed. It was nearly always silent, although sometimes she could hear Shepard muttering under her breath, and Garrus grunting. And then their sounds became more distant.

It was a long time of moving in the dark before Shepard called for them. Kaiden's comm was set loud enough in his helmet that she heard it, and then he pulled her hard, forward - the first time that he was rough with her. 

They came to a larger room. Her mother's voice cut through the air, distinct. “Raised to hunt and slay our enemies.” Kaiden pushed her to her knees.

Benezia's voice showed her surprise. “My - where did you find her?”

A gloves hand shifted on a rifle’s grip, rubbery. Garrus spoke. “I guess you didn't think this one through. Come peacefully and she lives.” Where was Shepard?

Liara’s pulse was thrumming in her ears. She considered escape - diving away from Kaiden, hoping that her mother would strike to protect her. But Shepard had said Benezia worked with Saren now. Had so much changed, in the fifteen years that Liara had been distracted by her research? After a thousand years, had Benezia finally and abruptly gone mad?

Benezia laughed, a low, cruel sound. “Ask me whether I care if she lives, or dies.”

Garrus breathed out. “I will do it,” he vowed. His voice was muffled, as if his teeth were clenched. 

Where was Shepard? Had she fallen, and they gone on without her? Had Shepard asked Garrus to kill Liara so that she didn't have to? Maybe Shepard was there, and just stood silently. 

It seemed an improbable scenario. Shepard did not like to kill unarmed innocents. She was bloodthirsty but not cruel in it. Her first kill had been accidental, but her third had been a bullet in the head of an unarmed boy, not unlike this.  _ That _ had felt bad. That had haunted Shepard, before she had grown breasts, baby-faced and perpetually dirty. Her mind always flashed back to it, a regret-not-regret, every time innocents had to die by her hand.

Something slid across the floor, and then there was the deep boom of a sniper rifle. So that was where Shepard was - she had let the others interface with Benezia, and she snuck around to flank her. 

A mine went off, and Benezia howled rage. Had Shepard penetrated her shield with just one hit? It was possible, but difficult. Doors opened, and Kaiden pulled her back to her feet and against a pillar. 

He knocked against her, and she could feel him manipulating a field. Or was that someone else? Liara pulled off her blindfold to chaos.

They were on a catwalk that circled a platform and a research tank. On the upper platform, Benezia lay. Liara did not see any blood. There were about eight asari commandos. Garrus and Tali worked their way around the platform, the opposite direction, but Liara could not see Shepard.

She heard her rifle, though, and looked up. Shepard had climbed the frail structure, exposing her body to the asari commandos - unseen until she struck. 

It was too bold a move. She was caught in two, maybe three, fields, halfway through her leap to the ground. Garrus and Tali moved instantly to the offensive, and with a look at Liara, Kaiden followed.

Liara went to Shepard. Her shield had already failed, and the commandos were focusing her down. In the field, each part of her body was subjected to the same pressure, but Shepard fought it, eyes closed. She rolled herself into a ball, to make herself a smaller target. Liara grabbed her hand and pulled.

It was the same as a push, but far more valuable, although most commandos did not train it. In combat it was barely useful, but to attract objects to your body - with careful control, yes, it was far more powerful than a push.

One of the fields failed, and the commandos realized what Liara was doing and the other two released Shepard.

Liara stopped pulling and started pushing, easing Shepard to the ground rather than slamming her down, as the commandos had hoped. Shepard was unconscious by the time she was on the ground, behind a crate. Liara  found her medi-gels and applied them carefully. When she was done, her hands were slick with blood. They were in a pool of it. Shepard breathed, though. Liara watched her until the rest came to them, and she and Kaiden floated the two unconscious women to the Mako and then the Normandy. Shepard and Liara's mother.

Liara had always been the protagonist in her own narrative, and it seemed right that she was there, in a crowd of strangers who were far kinder to her than the two people, both fragile now, who meant the most to her. 

* * *

Liara lay on the floor in the empty office. Her hand rested on her stomach, and tears streamed down her face. In the silence, she could hear them drip onto the cold metal floor. Her belly burned with urgency. Liara tried to grasp each long moment, but they slipped by. Liara had thought it would be a long fading, but it was not. This was the end, and it was poignant, raw, full.

She opened her jumpsuit and held her breast. Her other hand went under the suit, and her fingers slid between her own legs, comforting. She remembered Shepard's touch, and sped up. “Please,” she whispered. Her fingers brushed her nipple, and she imagined it was Shepard's. She remembered Shepard's warm slickness, and her body convulsed with it. Shepard had wanted to be inside. Liara slipped one finger in to herself, and her hips rocked. “Please,” she said again, and she reached for Shepard's impression. It was close, pressing against her consciousness, urgent and alive. She could have kept it in the moment of melding. The choice would have been easier. 

Her body tightened around her finger, and she closed her legs and came. The stifling tightness released. “Shepard,” she gasped. “Yes, make me yours. I love you. Please let me.”  _ Let me keep it. _ And then it was over, and Shepard was gone. Liara was empty. The fullness, so close to alive, had left her. She curled into herself and grieved.


	3. Chapter 3

Liara had been uncertain what they would do with her once they docked with the Normandy, but they barely gave her a second look. Kaiden and Tali bustled Benezia away, presumably to a holding cell. And Garrus walked with her to the med bay, where she let Shepard's body down on a cot. Doctor Chakwas, always gentle, went directly to work, digging the sliverlike bullets out of Shepard's body.

Garrus left immediately, and the doctor did not comment, so Liara brought a chair and sat there with them. She watched Shepard's profile, the hawklike nose and thin lips. Shepard kept her hair short, but it was longer than usual now, long enough to flip. Shepard liked the flip, a little. Enough not to trim it yet.

When the doctor was done, she looked at Liara for a long moment and then moved away, cleaning her tools.

When she finished, she said, “I am going to bed - it is halfway through my sleep cycle. Do you plan to stay here?”

Liara nodded. “Is there anything you want from me?”

“The system will wake me if her vital signs change, or if she moves. So no. But - I should tell you - she is not predisposed to welcoming visitors when she is here. You've been warned.”

Liara nodded and studied her hands until she left. Shepard would not want to wake with Liara here. Shepard did not show weakness, not in front of friends - not in front of anyone. And Liara would be the least welcome of visitors to her.

Liara stood over Shepard until time stood still, and then she took her chair and left.

She returned to her studies with a sense of deflation. She lost her impression, and the process distracted her further. Shepard disappeared from the med bay after the first few days, and Liara moved through the ship like a ghost, untethered. She considered approaching the other crew - Kaiden had been friendly to her. But ultimately the reward seemed smaller than the effort. Her shyness overruled her lonely misery.

It was only a few days after - although it had felt like months - that Shepard came to her in the ship's study She cleared her throat, and then said, “Liara, can I have a moment?”

Liara stood, and Shepard studied her face. “Can I sit?” she asked gently, after a pause.

“Yes, of course, Shepard,” Liara said, stumbling over her words.

“Thank you for getting me out of that field,” she said when she had settled in the chair next to Liara. Liara sat back in her chair. Shepard was both too far and too close. Liara’s pulse pounded dully. She was aware of her entire self screaming, somewhere far away. But the present moment - the moment of being in Shepard's gaze - was electrifying. She felt self-conscious. She had obsessed over Shepard - studied her from afar, held her impression close, dreamt of her - but nothing was like having Shepard, in the flesh, her eyes open, softer than in the corridor or on the mission. Thanking her.

“I - of course -” Liara stopped herself from repeating her earlier words. “I am glad that I was there.”

“We’d hoped that your mother would come with us, if we had you there. The tranq gun worked just as well, though.” Shepard's voice rasped, low and deep, and her eyebrow shot upward.

Liara smiled. “I wasn't sure if you planned to restrain me, or if you'd forgotten me entirely.”

Shepard laughed. “To restrain two powerful biotics in a ship this size…” she started, and then shook her head. “No, I was somewhat - certain of you. But I didn't want her to sense that it might be a bluff. I'm sorry I didn't trust you as well as I could have.”

Liara said, with perfect honesty, “I am glad that you had a plan to keep her alive. It would have served your purposes just as well to have her dead.”

Shepard shook her head. “I don't think that's true. We need to know the next move. Why did Benezia have that creature? What were they doing at Binary Helix, and how does it fit in with the Reapers?”

Liara took a deep breath. “And the geth,” she added. “And your vision, Shepard.”

“Yeah, that,” Shepard said, withdrawing a little.

“Have you been questioning her?”

“Yes, but we've had little progress. I thought - maybe you could do your, um, meld with her? Could you extract the information we need?”

So that was why Shepard came now. Liara stood and put her hands on the metal desk, trying to steady herself.

Finally she straightened and looked at Shepard. Shepard was tense, poised. She looked like she was ready to fight.

“It will likely be impossible, but I will try,” she said.

“Impossible? Why, because she is a biotic, too?”

“Shepard - I can't meld with someone without their permission. If she refuses the connection, I cannot -”

Shepard stood. “I see,” she said, and then she brushed past Liara and disappeared through the portal.

* * *

Benezia stood as if to make for the portal when it opened, but it closed instantly after Liara, almost clipping her body. Benezia sat back down at the table, and Liara joined her.

“I trust the accommodations are sufficient?” Liara started. In fact they were stellar - there was an actual cot, too space-ineffective to be placed for the ship’s crew, but important here. Liara did not follow galactic news, but in a flurry of curiosity she had researched humanity’s assimilation into galactic culture when she'd met Shepard, news that she had virtually ignored when it broke thirty years ago. Shepard was the first human Spectre, after a time span that was nearly as short as Shepard's own life. Why were humans so preferred?

It was because from the first they had endeavored to ingratiate themselves, particularly to asari sensibilities. They had stringently followed all diplomatic protocols, mandatory or voluntary. One was accommodations for prisoners in ships. This ship - though it was an early model - included spacious accommodations, a permanent sink, and cushioned furniture.

Liara sat on one of the benches, and Benezia followed suit after a brief pause. They were being watched, and both asari knew it. What would Benezia do?

“I would threaten your life if I did not think they cared as little for it as I do,” Benezia said.

The words stung. “Mother, what has happened? I had planned to visit you, but did not imagine the consequences if I did not.”

“Do not be ridiculous, child. This has nothing to do with you.”

“What is it, then?”

Benezia opened her mouth, and then her eyes narrowed and she closed it.

Liara wrapped her arms around her stomach uncomfortably.

“Matron,” Benezia said. Her voice was warmer than Liara had expected. “You are so young.”

Liara shrugged and covered her face. Shepard was watching them. “Mother, I do not want to talk about this.”

“Who is it? Someone on this ship? What have you decided?”

“No decisions have been made,” Liara lied.

“I thought you would wander forever, Liara,” her mother said. “Your fascination with the Protheans - you never sought out companionship, and when you found it you tired so quickly. I thought you had never done a mating meld.”

Liara brought her hands down from her face, although it still burned with embarrassment. “I hadn't,” she said. Benezia would not stop pursuing the topic, and maybe this would make Benezia more receptive. Regardless, Shepard was lost to her. The ache was raw in her heart, and she again wondered whether this was the choice of a child, to plunge so quickly into love. To trust Shepard with such an intimate expression, when they were still strangers. It had been what Liara wanted, but not what Shepard wanted. Shepard had not known what she was agreeing to. “Things changed - quickly, and then changed again.”

"I suppose it is not impossible that it would happen the very first time." Benezia stood and drew Liara up with her. “Who brought my daughter such pain?”

She _would_ meld. They often did so, when they were together. That was why Liara avoided communications from afar - it felt too strange to see Benezia and not be able to meld.

Liara put her forehead on Benezia's and reached out. Her mother met her, and they gently reacquainted themselves. Sharing her pain did relieve its ache. Benezia understood. She had been unmated throughout Liara's life.

 _She is beautiful,_ Benezia told Liara. _You should have kept the baby._ _You still hope to have her, in love._

 _Yes,_  Liara said. _How could I not?_ A flash of Shepard's face, Shepard's laugh as Liara turned her on her back.

 _The meld was so unwelcome to her,_ Benezia said. Liara saw, for the first time, a glimpse of Benezia's mate. Their blue bodies, wrapped intimately, and their palpuses twined together, stroking their lengths against each other, and inside. Benezia had never showed her anything like that before. The bliss of sex while mated and melding with another asari.

 _I won't do it to her again,_  Liara said, and then she sought in Benezia's memory. _GZ-741 scope third, 64787. What is that, Mother?_

_That is what Saren sent me to find. The location of a lost relay that leads to The Conduit._

_What is The Conduit?_

Benezia withdrew slightly, and then Liara saw the confusion. _What has happened?_

_It is his ship. The Sovereign. It - I had come to Saren to dissuade him, to bring him back to the Council. But the longer I spent in his presence - in the ship, I think - my mind is no longer my own._

Liara saw a flashing image, her own hands around Benezia's precious neck. It would take a long time to kill Benezia. Would she fight?

And then Liara said, _No. I can't do that. We will destroy this Sovereign and have you back._

 _I am - I think I am broken. I have already tried to escape._ Liara saw a human body shredded, blood coating every wall, the smear of fecal matter and organs, sliced into unrecognizable chunks.

_Shepard will save you, Mother._

_It is too risky._

Liara withdrew. “Thank you,” she whispered. She examined her mother’s eyes. “I will tell Shepard what you told me.”

Benezia's eyes were sad. “I have always been so proud of you, my Liara.”

“I know, Mother,” Liara said, taking a deep breath. “They have provided you a full library and limited access to news. Please consider this a vacation.”

Shepard seemed to take her word at face value, although the location of the relay was barely helpful without knowing where to direct their ship using the relay. They had already begun FTL toward their next mission, and Shepard hoped that it would be more fruitful than the last.

Liara told her about the indoctrination, but Shepard seemed unconvinced. She did not tell Shepard what Benezia had asked Liara to do.  Shepard would not hesitate to kill Benezia if she posed a threat to their mission - Benezia had exhausted her usefulness.

* * *

It was a few days later, once they were in orbit over a new planet, that Shepard found Liara in the mess hall. “I had a few questions,” she told her, and Liara followed her to the Captain’s quarters. “Questions" seemed a thin excuse, but Liara could not fully imagine what else Shepard had for her. Had Benezia done something? Or had Shepard discovered new information that she wanted to tell Liara in private?

The moment the door closed, Shepard had her hand on Liara's shoulder. She pressed her against the wall and slid a hand, soft and steady, from Liara's nipple down the curve of her side and to her hip. _Oh._

“What do you want?” Shepard asked when Liara did nothing but arch into the touch.

“I want you do whatever you want,” Liara choked. She felt like she had been holding her breath for hours, so acute was her longing. At the same time her body felt like it could breathe for the first time, maybe ever. Her head was spinning with the suddenness.

“Whatever I want?” Shepard said. Her voice was ironic, warm rather than cold. “You don't know what I want.”

Liara did know, but she stayed silent. Shepard had brought her to her room for a reason. She had already decided to have her again. It didn't matter what Liara said. To be silent was a safer bet.

“I am going to fuck you so raw and hard that you beg me to stop.” Shepard's voice was low, growling. Her face was close, but Shepard wanted to watch Liara's face, so not too close. “I am going to have you over and over again, until you can't walk without remembering me inside you. Last time I was patient. Do you remember how I waited?”

“Yes,” Liara gasped. Shepard's hand was the only thing touching her, still resting almost gently on her hip, but energy crackled between them.

Shepard had waited because she wanted Liara to be ready - because she knew Liara was not experienced, and wanted to please her. And Liara had wanted them to come at the same time. Shepard had been embarrassed that Liara did not orgasm faster - Liara remembered it now. The nav officer also had not come. It was frustrating to Shepard, although she had shown no sign of it.

“You're so wet for me,” Shepard said softly, nipping at her neck. Her other hand slid up Liara’s leg and rested on the bottom of Liara's ass, but their bodies were still distant.

Liara could not swallow her response. “I've been wet since the first time. I've been waiting for your fingers.”

Shepard unzipped Liara's jumpsuit and slipped her hand inside. Again, it happened so quickly. Liara opened her legs for Shepard and Shepard found her. Liara gasped and rocked into the soft touch. “What do you want?” Shepard asked again.

Liara's ears were ringing. “You. I want you, Shepard.”

Shepard pushed the jumpsuit away and nibbled her shoulder. They had still not kissed. Liara had kissed Shepard when they came, when she melded. Maybe Shepard would not kiss her again.

It didn't matter. Shepard's fingers were dancing skillfully around her. She remembered the sensitivity of Liara's pelvic area, the hard ridge in the front that, in arousal, was more sensitive than any part of her. And she remembered the inside, although her attention was not focused there yet. She teased and stroked both the hardness and Liara's softness, deep between her legs. Liara could sense a tension in her shoulders. She wanted to get it right.

“Since the first time? How did it feel like to go to sleep unsatisfied? Did you throb for me?” Shepard committed one finger, and Liara's body moved in a wave into her. Her hands fell on Shepard's neck. Shepard looked away, bowing her head.

The disengagement was almost physically painful, but Shepard was rocking her hips slightly with the movement of her hand and Liara closed her eyes to forget it. She still had Shepard inside. She focused on her fingers. “I could not sleep,” Liara said, truthfully. Shepard liked to skirt the edge of fabrication when she talked like this. In a flash of remembrance, she said, “I touched myself.” Shepard looked back up at her face, and Liara slid her hand from her shoulder, down her back. She’d had Shepard inside her then, fuller than Liara had ever imagined. “It didn't help me. I finished just as hungry.”

“You needed me to finish you,” Shepard supplied, and her hand shifted.

Liara could not speak for a few long moments. Shepard was careful, skillful and gentle, smoother than Liara remembered, but still deep and seeking. Shepard's thumb did not forget Liara’s outside, and she instinctively pulled her fingers out and up to keep Liara’s juices fresh, and to keep the outside touch from being too rough. This part of Liara ached for Shepard's wetness more than her fingers, but her inside was contracting around Shepard and Liara wouldn't ask Shepard to change positions. That was not what Shepard wanted now - she wanted to touch Liara, not to give her own wetness up to her.

“Come,” Shepard urged. Liara opened her eyes to see Shepard watching her.

“When?”

“Come right now. I need you to come.”

Liara nodded and held her breath.

“What do you need for me to do to make you come? Do you need to lay down? Do you need my body against yours?” She pressed Liara against the wall. Rather than the harsh urgency she had promised Liara, Shepard's touch was still soft and careful, caressing rather than bruising.

Liara loved her carefulness. Shepard only spoke her fantasy - her true purpose was Liara's pleasure. How could Shepard want that, and not want the rest of her?

“Just tell me you're going to keep doing this,” Liara asked her. She wasn't talking about just now, but Shepard might think she was - it was what Shepard had started with - it was not so bad, what she wanted. “Don't stop. Stay inside.” The last was a whisper. She was already coming. The pleasure came in bright waves, better maybe than the melding - there was no distraction from her body's satisfaction. Shepard watched her, stroking. Her hips strained against Liara, and Liara kissed her shoulder through her suit, wanting her lips but respecting her wishes.

When Shepard slowed, Liara put her hand around Shepard's hip and pulled her in, encouraging her.

“You still want it?” Shepard murmured, skirting around her, barely inside.

“I thought you said I wouldn't be able to walk without remembering you,” Liara said, smiling slightly.

Shepard almost smiled back. It felt intimate. Liara rolled her hips, and Shepard moaned.

“You like that?” Liara asked her, and did it again.

Shepard eyes closed and she nodded, her strokes deeper again.

“Why do you like it?” Liara asked her, moving faster, too. Her body drew Shepard in. How did it feel to Shepard, to have her body every way she wanted it? Liara would do anything Shepard wanted, but Shepard just wanted Liara's orgasm.

“I like how you jack off on me,” Shepard said. Her tone was breathless, more sincere than the words she chose.

“I need you,” Liara said, before she thought it.

Shepard looked up at her. “My hand is filled with your wetness. There's so much.”

“Do you like drawing it out of me?”

Shepard moaned and her hips ground forward again. Liara’s body flared, and her palpus slipped out from its hood, tasting Shepard's palm, awash in the wetness. She played with the fastener of Shepard's suit, and Shepard brushed her hand away, saying, “I am going to make you come so many times. You're already so close.”

“Yeah,” Liara said, and her body constricted around Shepard again, drawing her palpus back inside. “Yeah,” Liara said, and Shepard sped up, faster than Liara, dragging her forward.

“What do you want me to say?”

Liara almost told her to stop talking. Instead she said, “Lie to me, Shepard.”

“I'm a good liar,” Shepard said. Her eyes had tightened, squinting in something that was almost a grimace. “What do you want me to say?”

“You know what I want you to say,” Liara said, her heart dipping.

“The moment I laid eyes on you, my life changed.” That wasn't a lie. “I only want you.” Had Shepard had anyone after Liara? Did she want to be inside another woman? “You are the most beautiful woman in the world.” Liara remembered the moment Shepard saw her, suspended in the field. She had been shocked. She had wanted her from the first. That was true. “I love your blue body and your little - freckles - and your tightness and how fucking open you are.”

“I will always be ready for you. Take me at your pleasure.”

Shepard bit her nipple delicately, and Liara wrapped her arms around her shoulders. Shepard said, “I'm going to take you again today, and tomorrow, and the next day. I am going to take you until all your body knows is my touch.”

“Please,” Liara whispered. She could not tease out the lies and truth any more. “Please have me. You marked me from the first. You have me, in every piece.” Shepard wanted that.

“You are going to be so full of me that you can't take any more,” Shepard murmured. “Your body will squeeze and throb around me, and I am going to give you more, so much that you couldn't imagine taking more.” Liara’s second orgasm started, but Shepard didn't detect it. “And you will beg me to stop, but I will make you take more of me. I am going to stretch you and fill you -” she said, and then she gasped, “Oh.”

“Yes,” Liara said. She was straining for the connection. She knew her eyes had darkened with the reach, toward the meld, and closed them to keep it a secret. She needed Shepard deep in her belly again. She needed to keep her close. She wanted to feel the meld with her, not just now, but whenever she reached for her. _That_ was how Shepard would fill her. That was all Liara wanted. She wanted to hold Shepard, not just inside her cunt, but in her belly, the chance of her, the child that they might have one day.

Her orgasm started to fade, and with it Liara released the meld. She had never touched Shepard with it, not even asked for permission.

“You want to mate with me?” Shepard asked. Her fingers were outside again, dancing.

“Yes, Shepard,” Liara said, although it wasn't exactly right. She had already mated with her. _I had your child and let her go._

Then Liara wondered how Shepard knew what she wanted. It wasn't something Liara had ever specifically told her. She didn't know about her daughter.

Of course. The meld. It was not one-way. And it had been so intense, so long. What else did Shepard know about Liara? If Liara knew about Shepard's third kill, what dark secrets had Liara divulged to Shepard?

Liara had so few. Maybe Shepard had seen the asari homeworld. Perhaps she had come into the fight with Benezia having also known what it was to be Benezia’s child - with the memory of clinging to her skirt during countless functions, meeting dignitaries - the first human that Liara saw, odd and pink, the unfamiliar hair. Or did she see Jade, their research station in the jungle - how empty it had been without him, on the next planet she visited in her restless quest for esoteric knowledge?

“Hold me,” Liara breathed, and Shepard pulled out of her and put her arms fully around Liara. Liara put her lips against Shepard's cheek. The sweetness was overwhelming. Her body felt drained.

 _What did you see? Did you see how I wanted you? Do you know how singular you are?_ Liara wanted to tell her. But she did not want to spook Shepard. Shepard had waited until the end to ask the question. She wanted to know if it was erotic - she was uncertain. And with the sex finished, Shepard was ready to run. It was delicate. Shepard was not happy, or comfortable. She was tense under Liara's hands. This was not the part of sex that Shepard liked. But she was not fleeing yet.

Liara ran her fingers through Shepard's hair, perfect and alien, and rubbed their checks against each other. “You will be careful, this time, and minimize acrobatics?”

Shepard chuckled. “If I thought we might find another platoon of asari commandos, I would have to bring you along. I value life too much not to.”

“Bring me, then. I am a good shot. You will not regret it.”

Shepard considered it, and then shook her head. “I need you to keep working on that Prothean data disc. This is just a scouting mission. Nothing will come of it.”

Liara put her forehead against Shepard's, longing for her kiss, but Shepard stepped away.  Liara refastened her suit and left her there, knowing that her heart was bursting from impatience, from the thrill and terror of impending combat. She was finished with Liara, for now. 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote a chapter and realized it moved too fast, and this is my only solution: an intervening chapter, all redoing plot and character stuff, with no real explicit content. We are exiting angst-zone for a second.

It was a week before Shepard approached her again. They had spoken briefly, of course, on a few matters - it would have been impossible not to - but Shepard did not hold up her promise, and Liara was too shy to approach her. Surely Shepard knew that Liara waited for her.

Liara didn't even know what they were doing on Feros. Shepard had left Tali on the ship with Liara, claiming that the data disc was more important than the “colonists.” Liara did not mind. Tali was an agreeable companion, and their work was interesting if frustrating. Liara was nearly fluent in the Prothean language, but the data had to be decrypted. Liara already had a collection of Prothean data. The decryption and translation software could only be improved with new data inputs, and so running this new data disc through her existing programs allowed Liara to unlock information in her older files too. Shepard had needed to explicitly forbid the pair of them from tapping into the Normandy's VI unit to run the decryption software. Running the looping scripts on every available interface only produced useful information at irregular intervals, which was maddening and addictive to Liara. Liara was deep in a new rabbit hole - an entirely new approach, using a programming language that she was unfamiliar with, but Tali was proficient with.

When the door opened, Liara spun in her chair, expecting Tali and confronted, instead, by Shepard. She was still in her combat suit when she came in, and the smell of ozone was heavy around her. Her neck was red from the helmet that she now held in her hand.

“Not who you were hoping for, huh?” Shepard said, a laugh in her voice.

Liara leapt to her feet. “Not at all, Shepard.” She had imagined having Shepard here, again, so many times. In her imagination, Liara was much bolder. Shepard looked dirty and distracted. She had her gloves on. “Is there something I can help you with?”

“Well, yes, I guess. We discovered that there is a - I don't know, something that maybe the geth were studying? A fungus plant, all over the face of the planet. I thought you could talk to the VI in the research installation. I don't know the right questions to ask.”

Liara gave Shepard a once-over. “Do you mean, right now?”

Shepard frowned. “Yes, unless this is a bad time?”

It was ten minutes until one of her program routines stopped, but it would be there when she returned.

“It is fine,” she said, wondering if Shepard would send Kaiden or Garrus to lead her to the computer. They had been with her initially.

Instead of stopping at the main level, Shepard brought her all the way down the stairs to the bay. It was empty, as expected when they were docked. The soldiers preferred to stretch their legs, and the Normandy would likely have only a skeleton crew now. Liara trailed Shepard to the lockers, where Shepard rooted around, finally producing an overlarge jumpsuit covered with calligraphy. A raider’s suit?

“How's this?”

Liara raised her eyebrows. “A gift?” she asked incredulously.

Shepard looked at the suit and then back at Liara. “It's got a great shield booster,” she said. “You don't want it?”

“Thank you, Shepard,” Liara said, and took the suit from her, forcing herself not to take it by her fingertips. She was certain that the scent was not asari. Human? A krogran surely could not fit into such a suit.

“Yeah,” Shepard said, and ducked back into the locker, emerging with a rifle. “Does this look OK?” she asked. “Would a pistol work better?”

“No, that is fine,” Liara said. It was hard to tell if Shepard was blushing, but Liara thought she must be. The warehouse was empty of people. “Will you help me?”

Liara set the rifle down and put the suit back into Shepard's hands. She turned her back to Shepard, and stepped into the legs of the awful suit.

Shepard held the arms out for her, and as Liara fastened the front, Shepard's hand rested on her hip.

Liara turned around, but Shepard's hand fell off her body. The smell of the suit made Liara's head spin.

“Maybe a belt?” Shepard offered hopefully, and ducked back into the locker. She emerged with a thick utility belt, and Liara allowed her to wrap it around her waist.

“I think this is a cruel joke,” Liara informed her, and Shepard laughed.

“You hate it. I don't have any mirrors, but really, it does not look that bad. You are slender - that is all.”

Liara sighed. “Will you give me standard Alliance issue? I can't tolerate this.”

Shepard's eyes flicked up her body, and Liara's shyness came back in full force.

“Yes,” Shepard said, and in a moment she had offered another suit. Liara changed into it quickly, and Shepard gave her another once-over and nodded. “Very professional,” she said. “About as effective as paper, though.”

Liara smiled, feeling a little better. “Where did you get yours? It fits perfectly.”

“I had it modified,” Shepard explained. She strolled toward the lift, and Liara followed her more slowly.

“And you didn't even wash the one you tried to give me,” Liara remarked. The level of concern Shepard displayed was actually a little irritating.

“I mean, we haven't been back to the Citadel since we found that one. I will have it modified for you when we do. I think we will go soon - the Council has been uncooperative, and I thought meeting in person might get us farther along.”

It was a little strange to hear Shepard speak so casually of the Council. Liara had met the asari Councilor once, but the woman would not know her name - she would just know her as Matriarch Benezia's ill-gotten daugher.

“That would be nice,” Liara told Shepard. They'd reached the lift, and the door closed on them.

This time the silence felt uncomfortable. Liara turned to Shepard, and Shepard looked back at her. Her eyes were light for someone with as dark a skin tone as hers, a lovely green - hazel? Shepard was not flinching from her, or trying to possess her. She was just standing there, within arm's reach. Liara did not want to overanalyze Shepard, but it did feel different. Shepard was not pursuing Liara. But they also were not sleeping together. Had Shepard moved on?

Liara opened her mouth, not fully knowing what her question was, and then the lift door opened and Shepard led her out. Liara had always pitied colonists, but especially human ones. Their bodies were so soft, and they did not know at all what they were doing. That Shepard was their same species, and yet so different from the rest - Liara was constantly surprised by it.

They walked through the colony together, and then took the Mako to the ExoGeni headquarters, with Liara in the navigator's seat. Shepard seemed relaxed, unconcerned even. Her driving was steady now. She slouched back in the seat, and Liara kept her silence. Each moment felt too precious to squeeze, but too fleeting to truly enjoy.

Shepard led her from the Mako down into a collapsed bay. They passed a pile of dead dogs, their skin riddled with bullets and soaked in red blood. And then Shepard brought her to a terminal, giving her an ID badge.

Liara waved it over the terminal, and the VI computer spoke.

When Liara felt she had exhausted the computer's usefulness, she and Shepard walked away, into the hallway. Liara said, “The Thorian. It has mind control capabilities? And ExoGeni was studying it. Do you think - do you think the colonists are infected?”

“That is my guess,” Shepard said, and shrugged. “We still do not know why the geth were here. Maybe they wanted to access the Thorian. It seems like the only possibility.”

“OK,” Liara said slowly. She was distracted by Shepard's casual intensity. Shepard was standing close, and it felt like they were completely alone. “What would they want with it? It is so old. Maybe a - maybe a memory? Perhaps it lived through the last invasion, and remembers something about the coming of the Reapers that Saren needed.”

“Yeah,” Shepard said, and made the most adorable face Liara had seen, somewhere between a frown and a hopeful expression. “But where is it? Could you figure that out from what the VI said?”

Liara felt a smile spread over her face. Shepard was too lovely.

“A strange reaction,” Shepard said, and Liara dropped her eyes.

“If the colonists are being controlled by it, it - it follows that they are likely close to it,” Liara stuttered. Shepard felt like a stranger, but one immeasurably important, a diplomat or a Matriarch, far beyond Liara's reach. Liara's affection felt overreaching and inappropriate.

“Without a clue, we can't hope to find it,” Shepard said. “I thought your insights would be valuable.”

Liara clasped her hands together. “Have you spoken yet with the colonists?”

“Only briefly,” Shepard told her.

“You are running a risk, keeping the Normandy so close to them. They could bomb you.”

Shepard shrugged and tilted her head, toward the Mako. Liara followed her. “I am not too worried. But I had waited to ask the colonists where the Thorian is. Maybe now that we have both spoken with the VI, it's time.”

“I - I suppose it could be.” Liara hummed. “You will try to extract the information from them, and when you have it, you will eliminate them?”

Shepard nodded. “What do you think I should do?”

“I think you should use a nerve gas with temporary effects, and evacuate them.”

“An extensive effort for two dozen colonists on a corporate colony. ExoGeni should evacuate them - not a Spectre.”

“Still, use a nerve gas.” Liara sighed sharply. Nothing should endanger their mission - Liara agreed. But turning lethal force on people who were mind-controlled seemed cruel to her. “Where is ExoGeni? Why did they abandon this colony?”

“I don't know. Too expensive? Too much of a risk, considering they have no way of knowing if the colonists are still being controlled by the creature after they leave the planet? Maybe the colonists refused to leave.”

“But they were sending out that distress call. It would doubtless look bad for ExoGeni, no matter who responded to the call.”

“And a Spectre would be the worst of all. I can send their corporate a message telling them to clean up their own mess, and it will be on their own heads if they don't.”

“You'll have no proof without bringing some of the colonists with you.”

“Yeah,” Shepard said. “I guess that's right. They won't come willingly.”

“Some likely will. You should - maybe you should start by offering to evacuate them. Those that accept will be marked as uninfected, and they may have some clue about where the Thorian is.”

Shepard's eyes lit up. “That is an amazing idea.” They reached the Mako, and Shepard put her hand on its hull. “I hope my driving does not make you uncomfortable,” she said, almost apologetic.

“Not at all,” Liara said. “It is - it was good.”

Shepard smiled. “Good? Good,” she said, and then opened her mouth as if to say something. Then she closed it, shaking her head, and ducked under the Mako to board. Liara followed, wondering what Shepard had wanted to say to her.

 

Their plan worked well, except that there were no uninfected colonists. The colony leader, Fai Dan, opened the hatch to the Thorian’s lair just before shooting himself in the head, and Shepard and Liara had just enough time to secure their helmets before the Normandy’s gunners released their payloads of powerful, reversible nerve gas. The rest of the squad poured out of the Normandy once the colonists were neutralized, and they all followed Kaiden and Wrex down the twisting corridors, illuminated by the uncertain light of the sun shining through dirty glass and their headlamps.

Hulks of what once appeared to be asari were littered on the ground, some collapsed in on themselves, but most crouched in a somewhat upright position, like gnarled tree stumps. They were green, mossy and stiff. Liara paused to study one, and was surprised to see that its eyes were not putresced - they were open, and glistening, though the sockets themselves were not fully intact. These were not corpses, or at least not asari ones. Did this Thorian change the biology of its thralls? Or were these an alien species that Liara was unfamiliar with? This was not how the human thralls looked - not yet, at least. Was this how humans rotted?

“What are these things?” Ashley asked through the comm system. It appeared that Liara was on the same channel as the rest. Liara realized that the silence should have been eerie. Somehow she assumed that after Shepard told the rest of the squad to exit the ship, she had switched to their frequency.

“Dead things,” Wrex replied.

“I don't know if they're dead.”

“Cut the chatter,” Shepard said from behind them, and they all fell back into the silence of this abandoned metropolis.

Finally the twisting corridors, wrapping about an open space in the middle, revealed long tendrils of thick plantlike fibers. They led downward, ever farther into the Prothean building, and met in the open space in the middle of the building. Its features were indeterminate.

They must have passed a hundred of the collapsed corpses. Liara was deeply uneasy. She had just asked Shepard to bring her on a mission, and here she was. She almost regretted it now, except that it was better to have Shepard within close reach. It occurred to her that this situation was likely not unfamiliar to her - that she probably had seen much worse.

And then they reached the core. Liara recognized it as a birthing pod - not the brain of the plant, or its analog, but its uterus. Liara heard a shambling step through the helmet’s speakers, and when she spun, she saw the hulks there, lined up behind Shepard. Shepard saw them, too, but was unsurprised. She knew they were following them.

Shepard pulled out a grenade and raised it as if to throw it at her feet. More of the nerve gas? No wonder Shepard was unconcerned about the hulks - biological warfare agents were well-employed against this medieval level of technology. Then a look of confusion crossed her face, and she froze.

She slowly replaced the grenade and said, in the comm system, “You stand within the Thorian. Leave and you will keep your lives, and your - leader.”

The rest of the squad shifted uncomfortably, except Liara saw that Garrus and Kaiden were oddly still. The original squad. They were all infected by the spores.

That left Liara, Tali, Wrex, and Ashley. Not amazing odds. But Fai Dan’s heroic display showed that resistance was not impossible. He had been infected for far longer, perhaps years. Liara had no doubt in Shepard's ability to resist.

“Oh, boy,” Ashley said finally. She really thought Shepard was gone.

Liara wished she knew how to patch the uninfected members into the same comm channel, but the Alliance technology was unfamiliar to her. So she stepped straight up to Shepard and said, “Thank you for speaking to us. You know that you are powerless against us. We will take our leader and the rest of the humans you were using, and leave this planet. Your creeps and your body will be left safe. You can see that this is true.”

Shepard stood silently for a very long moment, and Liara worried that she was fighting against its power. And then she said, “This one thinks that it will not abide that promise.”

“She will,” Liara said, cursing internally. So Shepard would call their bluff - how difficult. “She simply needs to know what Saren sought here, and she will have everything she needs, and leave you in peace.”

There was a shorter pause this time. “Saren sought knowledge of those who went before. Trades were made - then the cold ones began killing the new flesh that we had obtained. You would take it away.”

“Shepard would not hesitate to destroy you. She has already seen your weaknesses.”

“She is mine!” It was another voice. An asari. She must have emerged from the birthing chamber. Shepard's eyes snapped to the asari’s, and then she nodded slightly at Liara. _Keep going. It's listening._ Or did she mean to tell Liara that she was alright? Liara had not been worried.

Liara walked through the squad to the asari and put her hand behind her neck. An invitation to meld. The other asari looked at her with fury in her eyes, but waited for her to speak.

Liara said, “Will you tell us what Saren wanted? We removed the cold ones for you.”

“Leave my new flesh and I will give you what Saren took, a Cypher for the old ones’ memories.”

Liara took a deep breath. Memories? Did the Thorian mean Shepard's beacon?

Shepard did not want to evacuate the colonists. There was no doubt in Liara's mind that Shepard would happily take the bargain. And Liara had convinced the Thorian that Shepard would follow Liara's terms - or was it Shepard that convinced it? Liara had no way of knowing what their internal conversation consisted of.

“We will leave everyone, except Shepard and her friends.”

The asari did not even nod. She just reached out, and Liara received the unfamiliar meld.

It was immediately torrential. Melds _were_ dangerous. Melding with lesser species could destroy minds. Melding with another asari was an act of trust, one that in this case was not warranted.

This asari had worked for Liara's mother. She had taken information, the genetic and cultural memory of a species, from the Thorian, who had built it accidentally by incorporating so many Protheans during its last revival from hibernation.

Some of it was not unfamiliar. Liara already knew the language. But some of it was spectacular, utterly foreign. She realized what Tali and she were doing wrong in the decryption, and instantly forgot it as she whipped through architecture, theater - the essence of being Prothean, what Liara had always obsessed over. It was the apex of Liara's understanding, and also humbling - she had not known how much she had missed before.

The last dregs of information poured in, and then Liara felt the Thorian's incorporation of Shepard. It knew it could not fully control her, but it still registered her agony at the thought of melding. It would protect her from that. Its understanding of the value of the Cipher - Saren’s word, or maybe Shiala’s - was unclear. As long as it gave Liara the Cipher, the bargain was completed. Liara did not have a chance to register her dubiousness at the arrangement, before it was gone from her.

Liara fell to her knees. The meld had been impossibly draining. Shepard pulled her upright, and she sagged against her, saying, “Don't you need this?”

“You have seen the beacon’s transmission, Liara,” Shepard said harshly.

“I don't know.” Liara faltered. She _had_ seen it, but not in completeness. What was it? She had not held that memory as Shiala melded with her. It had all happened too quickly.

The other asari was already gone. “We have to go,” Shepard said. The Thorian's hulks were groaning. They were already among them, grasping at the squad’s bodies. “I need you to do this for me. Can you walk?”

Liara shook her head, and Shepard crossed Liara's wrists and put them around her neck. She carried her up, through the masses, and up each of the floors, until they burst through the hatchway. Then Kaiden took her, and they went through decontamination and into the Normandy. Not a single shot had been fired. Liara fainted.

When she woke, it was on a cot. Shepard was sitting at a table. _The other prisoner cell_ , Liara realized. The thought made her sit up straight, and then her head spun and she leaned back against the wall by the bed.

“I just thought maybe you'd like some privacy,” Shepard said. She shifted uncomfortably, looking at her clasped hands.

“Oh,” Liara said.

“Really it's the nicest part of the whole ship,” Shepard said. “How are you feeling?”

“Fine - fine, I think.” Liara remembered the images, flashing and blurred. None of it made sense.

“Doc said you would recover on your own.” Shepard stood, and then paused. “Can I sit there with you?”

“Yes,” Liara breathed, and Shepard sat, just far enough that they were not touching. "How are you, Shepard?" she said, almost closing her eyes against the rush of her body toward Shepard's.

“I - it was freaky, but the farther from it we get, the more it fades. Not like - you know, the beacon." She paused, her eyes squinting, and then in a rush she said, "I continue to be in the position of thanking you.” Shepard paused again. "And I thought I should also perhaps apologize. I know you didn't - really know what would happen. I could have said - I could have asked you in a different way not to do - that - again.”

“ _I_ am sorry,” Liara said. Her heart was glowing, and bursting, and the only expression of both feelings was to cry. “I really did not know. I would never have hurt you. I only want your -”

Shepard put her hand on Liara's clenched one. “All right,” she said, interrupting. Her other hand went around Liara's back, and she guided her back down onto the cot. “Let me feel that, not hear it.” The harshness was back, but mitigated by Shepard's apology and by the silk of her fingers, easily pushing aside the soft med robe Liara was wearing. “The only thing I want to hear from your lips is moaning. Can you do that?”

Liara nodded and then Shepard moved down her body and kissed her ridges, working her tongue along them. She teased Liara's palpus hood and slipped her fingers inside Liara, and Liara was uncertain whether her body could want and have as much as Shepard gave her. She tried to turn Shepard, or reach her, but Shepard rejected the advances.  
  
When Shepard was finished, she stayed for a minute, allowing Liara to cling to her, to kiss her face and run her hands through her hair. Then she extracted herself from Liara and let herself out the door, and Liara cried - from happiness or sorrow, or both.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OK, here's the real deal chapter.

Liara opened the door to the Captain’s quarters to find that Shepard had always had a cot. She slept in the sleeping pods with the crew, but in the back of the room, where the ceiling hung low, Shepard had pulled out a cot with real cotton sheets and was laying in a ball on it, huddled against the wall.

At the sound of the portal opening, Shepard stirred, but did not turn.

“You have missed the past two meals,” Liara informed her.

“I am certain that my door is coded for nobody but me,” Shepard said. Her voice was muffled.

“It opened,” Liara said simply. She didn't know why.

“Thanks for - identifying that security breach. I will rectify it. You are dismissed.”

Liara approached the bed. “I had no idea of the depth of your feelings for Ashley.” Shepard’s body shook at that, but no sound or laughter escaped her. “You did the right thing, ensuring that the bomb was secured. That was the mission priority. Ashley knew what she was signed up for.”

“It is not that,” Shepard said, after a pause.

 _I know,_ Liara thought. She almost said it, but no - better to pretend a more normal level of understanding. Shepard had lost her entire unit just before being assigned to the Normandy. She had not cried for them. It was not religiosity, but something similar. Shepard did not fear or deplore death. She regretted it, when it was not toward a purpose.

“Will you please get up? We will have this conversation over coffee.”

Shepard was silent. Liara had advanced far enough that she could almost reach out and touch her shoulder, although she restrained herself.

“It is not the krogan cure, or the children that you killed,” Liara said factually. “So it must be something that Saren said to you. Will you - Shepard, let me help you.”

Shepard was still silent. Liara pulled off her outer jumpsuit, leaving a light shirt and her underwear. Shepard did not move, even when she got into bed and put her hand on Shepard's hip. So Liara wrapped her arm around her, interlacing their fingers. It was strange to feel Shepard's body through the thin material of their shirts. Liara was not hesitant to touch her, not like Shepard was, but she was accustomed to solitude. It took some time to adjust herself to the warmth of her, the shallow flutter of Shepard's breathing against her breasts.

Finally Shepard turned to her, pulling down her panties with trembling hands. Liara caught her hand and plastered her body against Shepard's, kissing her temple.

“You don't want me?” Shepard whined.

Liara laughed at the tone. _My only lovely Shepard_. “Of course I want you. Can I hold you instead, now?”

Shepard hummed and frowned, and Liara kissed the wrinkles in her forehead. Their legs were intertwined, and Liara thought suddenly of Benezia's image, her mothers in rhapsody. It was not such a different pose.

If Shepard was an asari they would have melded instinctively by now. Liara kept herself from reaching out, but communication would be so much easier if they were melded - rather than teasing out the sordid details one by one, Liara would fly through the experience itself, feel Shepard's emotions. She would know instantly what had bothered her so much that it was worth showing weakness before her crew, something she so very rarely did.

Instead Liara rubbed Shepard's back and kissed her shoulder. “Benezia has showed me much about Saren. He was not cruel to her, though the rest of the crew was so dulled by the power of the indoctrination and he beat them and killed them, just to replace them with more.”

“We saw commandos that were like that - you said - indoctrinated? They could barely lift their arms to shoot. Benezia isn't like that.” Shepard had roused a little at the topic.

“She said that the more that the ship exerted its influence, the less capable its subjects become.”

Shepard nodded. Her eyes were watery but steady. Were they green, or hazel, or brown? Maybe they were gray. The color of a sea in the middle of a storm. “The ship is called Sovereign. It is a Reaper.”

Liara let the words sink in. Without thinking, she put her hand behind Shepard's neck and her forehead against hers, and almost melded again. She barely caught it. Shepard saw her eyes darken, but she didn't pull away. Liara wondered why. Maybe she didn't know what it meant.

It was a relief to Liara. If Shepard wanted a lover that was close enough as to almost be human - less the skin and hair - that was what Liara would give her.

“There is already a Reaper here. They are mechanical life.” Liara repeated the information back to her, trying to understand. She released her tight grip on Shepard, and Shepard moved slightly away.

“Yes,” Shepard said. “The geth worship the Reapers.” She paused, studying Liara's face. “Saren said that sentient life has been through many cycles of evolution, and none has ever survived the coming of the Reapers. Protheans were the most recent iteration, before us.”

“So that is why we both have two arms and two legs,” Liara said. Her scientific mind jumped instantly to the more academic question.

“And a cunt,” Shepard teased, and she slipped her fingers, fast as lightning, between Liara's legs and caressed her.

“Shepard,” Liara scolded, and Shepard pulled away, her eyes bright with the teasing, and with the knowledge that Liara _was_ wet, although Shepard had not done anything to make it so.

Shepard wasn't precisely right, of course. Liara's genitalia did not look anything like Shepard's, really. Asari had evolved cunts and palpuses for pleasure in mating, for the connection that penetration bestowed. Some academics believed that there had once been a male of their species, and that when they lost the male, they found another option. Liara did not like that theory. She did not think the asari were somehow amputated of their male half. She did not feel like her body had substituted the palpus for a penis - as if a penis would be better, but the palpus would have to do.

It was convenient, certainly. She wondered for the first time what being inside Shepard would be like. Shepard might let her. Shepard had no interest in a penis, though. She might prefer Liara's fingers, her mouth, or her ridge, to exclusion. Liara would not exactly mind that, although she had put her fingers, wet from Shepard, against her hood during their first time, and the taste had been so tantalizing. She imagined telling Shepard that it was just a second tongue, longer and smoother and more narrow. That was almost true.

Shepard was studying her. Liara said, “I am trying to understand. Is it the sense of inevitability that has depressed you? What about the Thorian - why did you leave it alive, if this is your fear?”

Shepard shrugged. “The Thorian would never leave that planet. It will take care of its thralls - it cares for them, considers them a part of itself. And its control was not insidious. The Reapers are so different.

“Saren said our technology is all based on Reaper technology. How can we go forward, if we are unconfident in our own tools? What if _my_ ship is a Reaper, or can become one - inhabited by one - what if it is already in our minds? If Mother could become a slave to it, what chance do I have?”

“Maybe she tried too hard to understand,” Liara said, through numb lips. Shepard had slipped. She called Benezia _Mother_. Liara's heart was racing, although Shepard did not seem to notice.

That was why Shepard had fled her. Liara had so utterly dominated her mind that Shepard lost herself in it. It was the mating meld - held for perhaps too long, and plunging too deep - with a non-asari - it was no wonder Shepard had rebelled against its pull. _Are you draining me?_ Shepard had asked. She had felt herself slipping away.

Shepard's mind was strong enough to withstand the beacon’s transmission - and to hold together after Liara's unintentional assault as well. Oddly she was totally unworried by the Thorian's domination of her. To stay on that planet and tend to it seemed so impossible a fate for Shepard.

How many different aliens would have their way with Shepard's mind?

“Then I will not try at all,” Shepard said. Her eyes flashed, and her hand tightened on Liara’s hip. Liara became aware of her own nakedness, and Shepard's power. “I am just a soldier. I will fight to save us, even if it is just with my bare hands. I would rather die than be controlled.”

 _I am so sorry_ , Liara thought. She kissed Shepard's cheeks, arching her back, and Shepard slid her leg up to contact Liara's wetness, rolling her so that Shepard was on top.

Why had Shepard let her back in at all? Surely her sex drive was not so great that it overruled her fierce sense of independence. The same fury that Shepard had just expressed to Liara, fury at being controlled, at being helpless - how was it different from what Shepard felt toward Liara, just a few weeks prior? Liara did not understand.

They ground their bodies together, and then Liara urged Shepard's leg around Liara's hip and Shepard straddled her. Her wetness was so close, but Shepard did not seem to think of grinding it against Liara's hard ridges. Instead she rolled Liara's nipples with her fingers and pulled her own shirt over her head.

“Are you waiting?” Shepard breathed.

Liara grasped Shepard's hips. So it was a tease. “I need you against me,” Liara said.

“You like to feel how wet I am?” Shepard lowered herself into Liara, and Liara's hips ground up to meet her.

“I would like to fuck you,” Liara told her, although Shepard had already pulled away. “I want your wetness. I will make you shake, Shepard.”

Shepard let her body down so that her nipples rubbed against Liara's shirt. “So confident,” Shepard said, and Liara blushed.

And then Shepard kissed Liara for the first time since the meld. She lowered herself into her, and there was nothing but wetness and straining and power. Shepard ground hard and Liara’s palpus slipped out to taste her, just the wetness that Shepard had left on her, and it was so good that she stroked Shepard without thinking. Their wetnesses merged along Liara's palpus. She sought more, knowing that Shepard had a clit that she could probably find with her palpus as well as her fingers, and Shepard arched her back, pulling away to sit upright, and offered more, and Liara almost took it.

Instead she stroked her length, and Shepard did shake, as Liara had promised. “Oh, wow,” Shepard said. “That is.”

Liara was too deep in the moment to speak. Her ridges were far more sensitive than her inside, and the combination of watching Shepard's reactions and feeling them - being so close to her, with her wetness and silk against Liara, and giving her what her body waited for - Liara pushed her hips into Shepard, and Shepard moaned and ground down. Liara's palpus was moving quickly over Shepard, and between Liara's ridges - it fit well, smoothly, between their bodies. A wave of goosebumps washed over Shepard. “So good,” Shepard finished.

Liara had never done this before. She had imagined it, and she and Jade had done something that resembled this, but a woman’s wetness was ultimately entirely different than that. Liara probed Shepard and found her clit, circling it with the remembrance of Shepard's breathless instructions, and Shepard’s body opened further. Liara could not help but imagine being inside.

The thought was too much. She climaxed hard, and Shepard opened her eyes to watch it, still grinding.

“I get it,” Shepard said when Liara was finished. “This is why you liked being touched there.”

“Mmm,” Liara agreed.

“So, are we done?” Shepard asked.

Liara chuckled. “I am sorry. Just - a moment.”

Shepard nodded, and lay directly on Liara's body. Her ridges were still sensitive, and Shepard positioned them so that they pressed against her lower belly. It was exactly the right position to kiss again, and Liara waited for Shepard to decide whether she wanted to.

She did. They explored each other, and again Liara felt like she had never truly breathed before. It was good that Shepard decided to kiss her again. She had missed her lips. Maybe this meant that she had put their first time behind her. She trusted Liara not to meld - she knew Liara loved her, and that she would not hurt her. Liara wondered, selfishly, if Shepard would ever let her meld again. It didn't have to be bad, like their first time. She could control it and avoid overpowering Shepard. Shepard was all Liara had wanted; she had never intended to impose herself, only to absorb Shepard. The meld was a sharing of self, but Liara could control how much of herself she shared with Shepard.

She was pushing too hard, she knew. She wanted too much, too quickly.

Shepard started grinding her hips, which rubbed her soft belly against Liara, and then Shepard put her hand between their bodies and stroked Liara's cunt.

“I think it's your turn,” Liara breathed, although of course the touch was welcome.

“I just had some,” Shepard teased, and drove into Liara. Her face became serious, passionate. Liara put her leg up to Shepard's shoulder, and they both rocked. Shepard loved fucking too much. She loved having her fingers inside Liara. Even without direct stimulation, Shepard still preferred topping.

After a few long minutes of letting Shepard do exactly what she wanted, Liara turned her on her back. She was a little surprised when Shepard let her. So they would kiss, and Shepard would finally let her touch her again. Today, everything had changed.

Liara let her fingers dance carefully, although Shepard was soaked and ready. She drew on Shepard's memories, on her experience. Shepard rarely orgasmed in sex - last time, their touch was mutual, and Shepard was on top of Liara. Now Shepard let Liara completely control the terms of their joining, with a mixture of anticipation and hesitance. Liara found every part of her that needed, and turned that need into pleasure.

Liara could see when Shepard climaxed, although Shepard covered her face with her arm. Her body grasped Liara's fingers weakly, and then roiled, blossoming wetness from deep inside.

They lay tangled in the sheets for only a few moments before Shepard stretched and pulled Liara up out of the cot. She pulled the sheets up and then pushed the cot back into the wall. Always tidy. Liara laughed at her, and helped.

Then Shepard dressed Liara, leaving a kiss wherever she paused. Liara wondered absently whether this was how Shepard treated the women she bedded. Liara had not gotten a strong impression of Shepard's time with the nav officer,but she hadn't thought that Shepard was tender like this. This wasn't foreplay. What was it?

When Shepard stood, Liara captured her and kissed her, long and deep. Shepard was still naked. Liara's fingers skipped over Shepard's skin, brushing her nipples and sending goosebumps over her back. “Do we have to go?”

Shepard grinned and pulled on her panties. “I am hungry.”

“Very well,” Liara said, and she followed Shepard to the mess hall.

The ship echoed emptily. Shepard pulled a food pack out, offering it to Liara. “What is this?” Liara read the label. “Loin? You are ridiculous.” She smiled at Shepard anyway. Shepard was more cheerful than Liara had ever seen her. Her body practically wagged, like a puppy.

Shepard put it back and pulled out a pack of sweet rolls. “We are grounded, aren't we?” she asked Liara.

“Joker didn't know where to go. And you locked yourself away so thoroughly… this planet is beautiful. The crew needed a break.”

Shepard scoffed. “That is what I get for allowing aliens on the crew. Pretty soon everyone will try to take the same sleep shift and start wearing sweatshirts. The next time I go into the cargo bay, I will find a fucking disco ball.” She didn't seem too upset. “I told Joker to go into orbit when we got back.”

“Is that what you said? Nobody could understand.”

Shepard rolled her eyes.

“I found a - bathing hole. Would you like to bathe in actual water?” It was one of the most unpleasant parts of being on a ship - the lack of water. Liara had finally gotten used to it, but the opportunity to bathe in water was irresistible.

“What will everyone think?” Shepard teased. She had already worked through four rolls, and took another four into her hands. “Let's grab some soap.”

The hole Liara had found was a hike away. The ground was muddy and slippery, until they got to the stream bed. A slight trickle ran down it now, but the water’s fury had washed the volcanic rock clean and it was easier to walk there.

The water of the bathing hole was not warm, but in the tropical heat it was pleasant enough. There was a slight waterfall, and the rocks were rough. Shepard let Liara lather her body, and caught her palpus partially out, released by touching Shepard's body and by the water. Shepard asked to touch it, and was not disgusted. “Is it your clit?” she asked, and Liara told her it wasn't. “Does this feel good?” she asked, and Liara told her it was more like her tongue, or a finger. It wasn't exactly right, but it was a more comfortable comparison than the one Shepard had obviously drawn.

They stayed a few hours, laying in the sun on the black beach, not talking much.

Finally Shepard turned to Liara. “There is something else. Another beacon. I received its transmission.”

The black sand was sticking to her shoulder, and Liara brushed it off her. Her mind had gone completely blank. “You should have brought me,” she murmured.

Shepard shook her head. “I am glad that I did not,” she said, and sighed. “I think it is time. You said that the first beacon was unclear. But we need that information. We need it consolidated, and - we need the Thorian's Cypher to interpret it.”

 _We need to meld_ , she was saying.

“I have promised that I will not,” Liara started, and then she turned on her stomach and put her head in her hands.

“You will be gentle with me. I think - it is time,” Shepard said, but she was far away. Liara was overcome. Her head was reeling. She had hoped to meld with Shepard, but not over the beacon.

She had thought she could do it, while wrapped with Shepard in passion. Now, her head was clear, and she did not trust herself to be gentle. She wanted too much - she wanted that wild and reckless melding that they had shared the first time, even though it had hurt Shepard. How could Liara focus only on the beacon, on the Protheans, once she was inside Shepard? She wanted to mate again.

Shepard reached out and put her arm over Liara's back, snuggling up softly. The sand grated between their bodies. “Hey,” she said. “Hey, it will be good. I trust you.”

The words were unexpected. She had never guessed that Shepard trusted her, not after what she did - but wasn't Shepard here, her naked body pressed against Liara's, alone together on an alien planet, far away from anything that might be familiar to her? Liara again felt a sense of confusion. Was this how Shepard treated her lovers? Had Liara misunderstood? Or was Shepard treating her differently than the rest?

The sun had started to set by the time they gathered all their clothes and gear and went back to the ship. Liara watched Shepard climb down the rocks. She didn't seem fully real.

It was Liara's sleep cycle, but Shepard did not let Liara leave to the security of the pods. She drew Liara back into the Captain’s office, and Liara followed her dubiously. She put down the bed and undressed, releasing black sand all over the ground and the white sheets, and waited for Liara to follow suit. Then she drew Liara down on top of her in the bed and kissed her.

Liara's body glowed, but Shepard did not grind or touch the rest of her. Was this how Shepard would receive the meld? Liara kept her body still, and wanting.

Shepard moved from beneath her, so that they were on their sides and facing each other. “Relax, lovely,” Shepard murmured. “I want to do this.”

“Keep the memory of the beacon close. Walk me through it,” Liara said. “I don't - if I have to look for it I will go deeper.”

Shepard nodded. She wrapped an arm around Liara's back and nuzzled into her neck, and Liara rubbed her back. “I love your skin,” Shepard informed her. “It looks scaly but it's soft.”

Liara laughed. She realized that she was crying. “I love your skin. It looks soft but it’s furry, like a monkey.”

“Thanks,” Shepard said. She put her hand behind Liara's neck.

“Should we really do it - right now?” Liara asked.

A frown passed over Shepard's brow. “I don't want to anticipate it.”

“You want to get it over with?”

“You will be gentle with me,” Shepard said, repeating her earlier words. “Liara, please.”

Liara released a tight breath and said, “OK, are you ready?”

“Yeah.”

Liara reached out and Shepard was there, softly glowing gorgeousness that received her. Liara barely touched her, the same touch perhaps that she had given Shepard in the corridor.

 _She's losing her edge_. It was Kaiden’s voice, incredulous. _She asked me if I was OK after the Thorian._

 _She is in love._ It was Tali. Shepard stood stock-still in the corridor, listening to them.

 _Shepard doesn't fall in love_ , Ashley countered. _She is the coldest, hardest bitch in the fucking fleet._

Shepard didn't know if it was love. But it was something to do with Liara. It was the piece of Liara that had at first felt so powerful, that had dominated Shepard's own self. Now it crept out unexpectedly, showing Shepard a different path. It did not stop her from executing Wrex, but it made her regret it more than she would have.

 _Thank you,_ Shepard said to Liara.

 _I love you,_ Liara expressed. _I want you._

 _Be gentle,_ Shepard reminded her, and Liara showed her what Benezia had showed her, sex while melding, and then Liara and Shepard in a similar pose, Liara inside Shepard and melding, feeling everything. The impression, refreshed in Liara, a guarantee and a promise.

 _I would give you everything,_ Liara told her.

 _You would take from me,_ Shepard corrected her.

Liara withdrew almost entirely, opening her eyes. Shepard stirred under her hands, and Liara saw that even this slight meld overpowered Shepard's sense of her own body. She almost released Shepard, but Shepard finally dragged out the memory of the beacon. _Here_.

It was a jumbled blur, but Liara went slowly through it, and Shepard trailed her, absorbing pieces of meaning. She did not want the Cypher, but Liara gave her parts of it anyway.

_It is a distress call and a warning. This is what the Reapers did._

_Does it say what their weakness is?_

_No, but - that is Ilos. That is where the Mu Relay will take us. That is where Saren is._

Shepard tried to withdraw herself, and Liara let her slip away. It was a long time before Shepard opened her eyes.

“I'm sorry,” Liara said to her.

“There is nothing to be sorry for. You didn't do it.”

Liara nodded, and Shepard rubbed her back and kissed her. After a long time, she slept. Liara followed her, dreaming of the Prothean ending. In Liara's dream it was Shepard’s body that was ravaged by the Reapers, rather than the Protheans. She woke abruptly in the night and found Shepard in the dark, warm and unscarred, precious but fragile, plunging without regret into her fate, and impossible to halt.


	6. Chapter 6

Liara had not known what to wear, and she had stuck with a light green tunic. Shepard was late to meet her, and while she waited at one of the high tables near the bar, two humans and a turian approached her, totally innocent of the scent that Liara was exuding. _Taken. Mated._

When Shepard finally came, Liara did not recognize her until she put her elbows on the table. “What do you think?” she asked directly.

Liara smiled. “Of the dress or the hair?”

“Both.”

“Stunning.” Shepard was wearing a light blue dress that clung around her belly and flowed everywhere else. It was much lighter than her skin, a pleasant contrast, and matched well with the brilliant red color of her hair. Shepard had not told Liara she planned to dye it. “Did you pick the dress for the hair, or vice versa?”

“The dress for the hair,” Shepard said. “Come. We are late.”

Shepard led her to the interior elevator, twining their fingers together. They drew little attention - another asari with her mate. When they reached the elevator, Shepard took the chance to kiss Liara, and by the time the door opened Liara was breathless.

The table was near the edge of the tower, but this restaurant, in contrast with many of the others, blocked all view of the bustling city below. Instead, the endless sky faced them. Liara felt a chill as she looked up. So rarely did she see the sky without an atmosphere or backlit by a ship’s lighting. She looked down before she got vertigo.

Shepard liked the sky. “Did you know I didn't even know what a star was until I enlisted?”

“You grew up in the biggest Earth city,” Liara said.

“By that you mean the sewer. It's funny because I was only awake at night. But I never saw the stars.”

Liara nodded. “Even in the biggest asari city, you can still see the stars.”

“That's because you asari have a sense of restraint.”

“I am glad that you humans do not,” Liara said to her.

As if to illustrate Liara's point, Shepard ordered fifteen appetizers, each more bizarre than the last.

“Any reason for the change?” Liara asked her. “In your hair?”

“Alliance military wouldn't allow it. Now that I'm a Spectre I can do anything I want.”

“A nice thought,” Liara remarked, and she wondered if Shepard's loyalties had changed. When they melded, Shepard had been dubious of the Council and devoted to the Alliance. Liara searched the past month for evidence that things had changed, but produced nothing. If she had followed Shepard's missions more closely - if Shepard had let her into confidence about such things, really - she might have grounds for a different conclusion.

She wondered if she should prod Shepard. What had happened with the Council when they arrived at the Citadel? After such a frenetic dash here - ready to move on Ilos, hot on Saren's heels - why had they suddenly paused? Shepard seemed unconcerned. Maybe that was a clearer sign than any that something was wrong.

When the main meals came, they were both totally uninterested in them. Shepard took the meals to go and they left promptly.

They went to Shepard's room, making idle conversation, but comfortable in silence. It was no different from the room Liara had, but Shepard had dimmed the lights and opened the blinds. She lit a tallow candle - a rare luxury - and presented Liara with a bouquet.

Liara laughed at her. “What is the occasion, lovely?”

“I would like to give you a flower for every day,” Shepard said solemnly. “A rose for every day that I made you miserable. A chrysanthemum for every day that I have made you happy.”

“What about the lily?”

“For every day that we are apart.”

Liara put down the bouquet and put her arms around Shepard's shoulders. “I hope it is only the one,” she said, nuzzling her. “Thank you for the gesture.”

“It is worth any price to see your smile.”

“My smile costs nothing,” Liara told her, and Shepard finally kissed her, playing with the front of her tunic as if hesitating to take it off.

Liara was not as coy. She pulled the tie on the side of Shepard's dress and put her hand around Shepard's naked back. Her slenderness was accentuated by the thin sheer of the dress, and Liara almost did not want to take it off at all. She pulled at Shepard's underclothes, and Shepard helped her. Shepard's touch was soft, urging Liara without overpowering her.

Liara opened her mouth, but was unable to find the words. “You are so sexy,” she said finally.

“Yeah? Tell me why,” Shepard said.

“You're - I love how this dress both reveals and conceals you. I like the color against your skin.” Liara felt herself fumbling, and dropped to her knees and put her lips around Shepard's nipple, drawing it taut against the fabric of the dress.

Shepard gasped. “More,” she said. “Just touch me, Liara.”

“Maybe I like to see you longing.”

“It's been all night. And all day,” Shepard added, perhaps remembering the night before, spent together in Shepard's now well-appreciated cot. Liara looked up, shocked again at her hair. “Pretty much forever.”

Liara kissed her hip at the part of the dress, and Shepard moaned and grasped her shoulder. She unfastened the last tie and Shepard let the dress down. Liara parted Shepard's lips and put her tongue against her. She found her clit easily, and circled it. Shepard cried out. “Inside,” she said, and put her leg over Liara’s shoulder, giving her better access.

Liara teased her entrance with her tongue, and then withdrew, pushing Shepard's leg off her and standing. Shepard unfastened Liara's belt, kissing her with a storm. She pulled Liara to the bed and on top of her, and Liara's pants were down far enough that Shepard could rub against Liara's ridges.

An incoherent sound came from Shepard, and Liara answered with the same. Her palpus ached. She rode Shepard, and Shepard ground down, flushed and open and endless. Liara grabbed her breast and propped herself up with her other arm, rutting into her. Shepard tasted different than usual - thicker.

“Inside,” Shepard gasped, working off Liara's tunic, button by button. “Please let me feel you.”

Liara pulled away to put her hand between them, and Shepard shook her head, pushing her hand away. Liara let herself back down on Shepard gently, and Shepard found her lips with hers, and her ridges with her cunt. “Come on, baby,” Shepard ground out. “Don't make me wait.”

Liara nodded, but the shock of Shepard's request made her hesitate. She had fantasized, certainly, but now that Shepard had asked, it seemed impossible to actually do. Would their bodies still make sense together with Liara's difference so accentuated?

Shepard put her leg around Liara's hip and drew her back into her body, and they began rocking again. Shepard moaned and arched, dragging Liara's pants down her legs with one foot. Then Shepard said, “Please.” Her voice was pouting. “I know you want to fuck me with it. Don't you want to taste my inside? I need it.”

Liara let herself out. Instead of diverting to Shepard's clit, she unwound herself directly into Shepard. They both stilled. Liara reached the end of Shepard, and there was still more of her. It was so different, open and wet, warm, surrounding Liara’s sensitive appendage. Liara’s palpus was wet, too, and instead of the ownership she felt when she had penetrated Shepard before, it was a joining. For a moment it was perfect.

She instinctively flicked Shepard with her tip, but Shepard did not react. Maybe she couldn't feel anything at all inside her. Liara's palpus was so narrow, and smooth.

Liara pulled in a little and focused on Shepard's upper wall. She moved her palpus like her finger, and Shepard moaned and kissed her sloppily. Shepard's body contracted around Liara, and Liara increased her pace, grinding into Shepard with her ridges. She was completely focused on Shepard, watching her face and wondering when Shepard would ask her to withdraw. She was self-conscious. Surely Shepard would tire of this. Liara's fingers could do much more.

“So good,” Shepard moaned. Her body had been still, but she slowly rotated her hips - not down, to increase pressure on her clit, but up, to give Liara more access.

Encouraged, Liara tried pushing harder. Her palpus was not a muscle she used often, and it did not have much leverage, but Shepard convulsed. Her eyes were closed, and she reached for Liara's shoulders and pulled her body down.

“Stop propping yourself up,” Shepard told her. “I want you to weigh me down.”

“OK,” Liara said, but she withdrew from Shepard, returning to her clit with a sense of relief.

“Fuck, Liara,” Shepard cursed and opened her eyes, although her body twitched into the touch. “Get out of your head. Just do what you've been wanting to do.”

“I don't know what to do,” Liara whispered.

“Guess what?” Shepard said, growling. “Nobody knows what they're doing. We all just make it up as we go, and then it works or it doesn't, but if you stop now I am actually going to kill you.”

“OK,” Liara said, feeling even worse.

Shepard kissed her and wrapped her legs tightly around Liara. Liara couldn't prop herself up like this, and she felt a little trapped, but she focused on Shepard's kiss and it worked out some of her tension. Maybe it would be easier to let Shepard dictate what was happening. The combination of topping and penetration with her palpus had been so unfamiliar as to be overwhelming.

“Liara, my sweet gorgeous lover, please give me your body. I will die on the spot, right now, if you don't give me -” Liara unfurled herself into Shepard, and Shepard gave a choked-off cry. “Yes, that is it, that is exactly right. Please.”

This time Shepard was even wetter. Liara could practically taste the desperation, iron-like, inside her. Liara focused on Shepard's face, mouth open, gasping. She grabbed Shepard's breast and followed Shepard's uneven rhythm, and then she bit Shepard's neck and Shepard's walls squeezed her, hard and then softer, fluttering aftershocks that Liara could feel along her length. Shepard and Liara's mingled wetness blossomed out of Shepard onto Liara's ridges, and Shepard's pleasure felt so urgent that Liara's hips twitched into her clit, setting off another wave of rippling inside Shepard. Liara imagined what her body looked like, at Shepard's pulsing entrance, tight inside against Shepard's inner wall, smooth and dark and deep inside her.

When Shepard finished, Liara withdrew and Shepard protested weakly. “Come on, Liara.” She ground herself against Liara's ridge. “You -” Her eyes rolled back and her hips shook again at the light contact. The expression stirred Liara’s belly.

“You still want me?”

“Yes, angel. I always want you.” Liara went back inside her, and Shepard opened her eyes and put her hands on either side of Liara's head. “I don't think you get it. I haven't told you.” The words were coming quickly, almost like Shepard was afraid of them. Like if she hesitated, she wouldn't be able to say them at all. “I haven't told you how you make me feel. Like I am invincible, like I'm perfect. I feel like you will protect me from everything and everyone. I think you're the only person I've ever trusted.”

“I love you,” Liara told her, for the second time.

Shepard nodded and licked her lips. “Yeah,” she agreed. “I think that is - I think you're right.”

Liara looked at her. Her flushed face, her glinting grey eyes, dilated, and newly red hair, her face unfurrowed and sweet, nearly innocent. “I love you, and I will protect you from everything and everyone. You are safe here.”

Shepard nodded, rocking again, and Liara followed her, closing her eyes. Shepard _was_ safe, but to have an alien’s second tongue inside her and to see how badly that alien wanted to invade her mind - that was something Liara should protect Shepard from, too.

When they were finished, Shepard held Liara from behind and they watched the city rush by the windows. “I wanted to have one night, before it all happens,” Shepard told her.

“You will go to Ilos?” Liara asked.

“Anderson is going to release the hold they put on the Normandy in the morning.”

“A hold?”

“Yeah,” Shepard said, sighing. “They think that the Conduit is a ruse created by Saren to distract us from his plan of all-out assault. You'd think it would be the other way around - the fleet can't follow us to Ilos, anyway - but yeah, they've pulled me off the mission.”

“What will Anderson do?”

Shepard sighed. “He will hack the ambassador's personal computer to release the hold long enough for us to jump.”

Liara turned in Shepard's arms to look at her. “You will become a renegade.”

Shepard grinned. “Isn't that what I was always meant to be? A criminal, on the run from galactic police, in pursuit of justice?”

Liara frowned and traced the smile line in Shepard's cheek. “I will never understand you, I'm afraid,” she said.

“You think I'm a military man, down to my core?”

“I think you are the brightest flame, beating back the darkness. You burn so recklessly, on such embers - your fuel is unclean, but you are clean, perfect. You are a ferocious force, but the justice you deal out is not random. It is carefully metered, but swift.” _When will your fuel run out?_

Shepard's smile faded. “You worry that I will not come back from Ilos. You think Saren will best me.”

“I know that you will beat him,” Liara said quickly, and then she buried her face in Shepard's breasts. “Of course I worry for you.”

Shepard let her fingers stroke Liara’s head, softly roaming between her crests. Nobody touched her head like that except Shepard. Liara liked the attention, although by instinct she shied away from the touch. Humans used touch as asari used the meld, and the past week had shown Liara just how much Shepard longed for the nesting of two bodies together. Having accepted this from Liara, Shepard sought it, morning and night.

“I guess when you deal out as much death as I do, you start to feel like death is just another side of life.”

Liara nodded into her body, and then Shepard scooted down to look at her in the eye. “Liara, when we - mated - did that mean that you could have my baby? Is that what Benezia meant? About decisions?”

All of the breath felt like it left Liara's body at once. She nodded.

“And now?”

What was Shepard's angle? Why would she dig this up, after Liara had almost buried it entirely? “No longer,” Liara told her.

“Is that why you wanted to mate with me?”

“Not - before.” Liara struggled to explain. It was good that Shepard wanted to talk about this. It was just painful to Liara. “I just wanted to have you, and - I thought the mating meld would bring us closer. It was uncontrolled, because I did not think to control it. But afterward….” She studied Shepard's face. How much should she tell her? Should she reveal how close her daughter felt, how Liara could feel each detail of Shepard incorporated into the new life they could make? “I do want you to be my daughter's parent. Then, and now, and always, Shepard.”

Shepard studied her, and then nodded. “You would want to have a baby now.” She put her hand on Liara's belly as if to feel it.

The impression, or its ghost, stirred at Shepard's touch. It was the sweetest and the most painful feeling. “Only if you wanted it, too. I would not go forward unless it would bring you joy, too.”

Shepard squinted at her. “I haven't thought about it.” She took a deep breath. “What a cruel thing, to bring a person into this awful world.”

Liara laughed and put her hands on either side of Shepard's face. “I am glad your parents did.”

The thought seemed to give Shepard pause. Had she never considered it? “I was an accident. The daughter of a drug dealer and a prostitute.”

“They did want you,” Liara said. “Why else would he have brought you with him to Hong Kong?”

Shepard shook her head. “Then where did he go?”

Liara kissed her furrowed brow. “Something happened to him. You know he would have come back for you.”

Shepard nodded, but Liara could tell that she didn't really believe it. She smiled. “I am glad your parents did, too. I can't think of a kinder or more compassionate soul. You do nothing but good in this world. I am so glad that I found you.”

 _Just one lily,_ Liara thought to herself. _You will only leave me for one day._ She kissed Shepard and then turned in her arms away, toward the starport. “Where is Benezia?” she asked.

“On house arrest in some apartments. Councilor Yvani is not ready to put her in prison, but dubious of my story of indoctrination.”

“That is… good,” Liara said, remembering her mother's request for execution. She had repeated it, every time that they melded since. Benezia did not think she could be trusted. Liara tried to laugh it off. “As long as Sovereign stays far away from the Citadel…”

Shepard laughed with her. “Don't worry. We will keep them tied up on Ilos. It will just be a few days before Benezia's mind is entirely her own.”

“Indeed,” Liara agreed. Benezia had been so proud that Liara’s theory of cyclical extinctions had been confirmed by Saren. Even the galactic cover-up that Liara had suspected - the Reapers were the last piece in the academic puzzle that had so fascinated Liara.

Well, not the _last._ There was so much more to learn. To go to Ilos, in person, would be an opportunity of a lifetime. No scholar who published in Citadel space had ever been. Liara's fingers twitched with anticipation.

She went to sleep with that anticipation, but again woke in the night with the visions of Shepard's beacons. Shepard's body was torn and burnt. Her face was laid bare to the skull. Liara watched her as she fought on, mangled, both dead and alive.

In Liara's womb, the impression became a body, and the body became a baby in Liara's arms. Liara realized that Shepard knew, although she had not yet looked back at them. That was why she fought on. That was why she would not die.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6Lqn5vJ7bo

Harria Shepard did not know how she died. At first it seemed normal. Reconstructed? That's fine. Killer bots? All right. Her body worked well. The voice - Miranda - said she was not fully healed, but Harria did not feel uncomfortable. It felt like it always had - pain, through her feet when she walked, slices of agony in her stomach when she rotated her torso. Normal. Isn't this normal?

Her mind reconstructed the time before her death. Saren. The Conduit, the Citadel, the data hack that gave her access to the Citadel's master controls. At times the angle was wrong, somehow - she was not driving the Mako, she was in the gunnery - she could not see the master controls, although she must have. She could not hear what Liara whispered to her as she left her in Ilos with an Alliance trooper. It was the right thing to do, although Harria could feel her own heart wrench and ache at leaving her there. Would she be safe? Safer than the Citadel. Safer than Saren. And Benezia.

Shepard was the one who saw Saren's body stir within the wrecked gardens of the Council. She'd been holed up under the console, sniping at Benezia, waiting for the Citadel to reopen fully before giving up the console to the fight with Benezia. They did not see Saren until he lept up on the glass viewport. Shepard had thrown a grenade, and then another. Saren's reconstructed hulk whipped through the hole she'd blasted in the Citadel, into open space, and then - then Shepard went through, too. Had she jumped? Had she been pulled by some force? Had she planned it, or had she been dragged out? What would Liara think - what would she do, when she found out how senseless Shepard's sacrifice had been?

Liara must already know. It had been two years, although it felt like yesterday. Although the memories were just images, pieced together through many cameras, none of them her own.

The angle of her memories was wrong, but that was not all that was wrong. Words sprung to Harria’s lips as if well-rehearsed, but she knew she had never said them. Intimidation. Lies, where necessary. She balanced each outcome and came to decisions easily, drawing on information that she often only realized in retrospect. She was decisive, stern - a good shot, and a better leader.

But it did not feel like Harria was the one that was doing these things. When she snapped out of cover to take pot shots at an advancing krogan, she also snapped out of her body - somewhere else, someone else. Another person took her place. Programmed moves. Steps in a dance that Harria had watched but not yet participated in. Even afterward, with the bodies of the dead pooling blood, sprinting to the fan controls in the quarantined district - shooting down her first husk, humanoid and, impossibly, familiar - familiar for a reason she only knew when she opened her mouth and said, “The geth were using these husks against us before” - afterward, afterward the dance was as alien and strange as it had ever been to her. Another person's body. Another person's life.

It did not seem possible, but the farther from the Cerberus slicing-block Harria got, the more actual memories she attained, the less real she felt. After each mission, she sat for hours in her cabin, on the ground in the corner. She told herself that she was turning over the combat, analyzing everything she had learned. The reality was that she was waiting for the darkness to return, the sweet nothingness of sleep. Maybe, the nothingness of death. That felt most real.

She was playing a part. She read the script and she knew the lines. She almost had the face, even, although synthetic red flared through the skin she had been given, slashes that made her look more machine than human. They did not bleed. They did not scab. They did not hurt. At least, not more than the rest of her.

The worst of the slashes was across her ribs. You could still see bone through the scar. It did not close. Medi-gel did nothing for it. This body did not remember quite how to heal. Or was she healed? Was this as good as it got?

There were flares of emotion, though. When she first spoke with the new Normandy's AI, dislike flared in her gut, green and gold prickled. Shepard hated AI. She hated being spied on, like another prisoner in her own home.

The AI was in her cabin. It watched her while she sat and waited in silence for the darkness to return. It didn't speak, but it waited for her to. Harria bit her tongue, held her gut, and bore it. That was what Shepard would do. The mission was the only thing that mattered. So what, if Kaiden Alenko was now nearly an enemy to her? She barely knew him to begin with. She had barely known any of them. They were all meat to Shepard. All but one.

 _She is in love._ Harria did not know who had said it, but the memory was sharp. Shepard had been in love. And so Harria was, too.

To wake with another woman's voice in her ear had felt strange to Harria. She knew what Liara's voice sounded like, and it should have been hers that woke her. Harria's pulse thrummed to the beat of her name. _Liara._ My crew, she said to Jacob. I need to have them back. _Liara_ , her heart sang. _Who are you? Did I have you? When will I have you back?_

Miranda Lawson came to her in her quarters, ostensibly about the krogan supersoldier. She had pressed Harria to the wall and asked if there was anything else. _Anything else._

Harria had held her breath and said, _No, thank you. No._

Lawson had stepped away, a slight smile on her pouting lips. A thoughtful look, or calculating. A vulture, circling. Not dead yet. Hardly alive, but still breathing. At what point would Shepard not put up a fight?

And Harria? When would she die enough to stop fighting? Or when would she wake enough to start?

When would she stop long enough to breathe and ask herself _why?_

Did Lawson think that she had done a good job in recreating Shepard, that Harria had refused her offer without a pause? Or did she think, perhaps, that Harria had misplayed the part? Exaggerated the expression, flinched too hard at her touch? Maybe Lawson had made a mistake in raising the asari on such a high pedestal, when Shepard would have taken what was offered?

Had she slept with Liara at all? Or did Shepard - Harria - did Shepard love her from afar? Did Liara feel the same? Had they confessed their feelings before Shepard left her for the last time? Where was she now? Working for the Shadow Broker, Jacob said.  _She is on Illium._

The moment that Harria was alone on the Normandy, she had looked Liara up on the web. Two hundred credits to send a personal message to her.

The one she sent was simple.

_I am back. Please meet me. I will be at the Citadel in two days. I will wait for you._

She had blanked on how to sign it. Did Liara have a name for her? What had she called her? Shepard. Should she sign it, _Love?_

She did not sign it at all, but she kept the From line correct - her personal message account, hosted and still online after two years, relatively stable for all that she had been dead. Liara would know it was her.

Standing before the Normandy hatch, having waited two days longer in the Citadel, Harria found that same roiling emptiness that she had felt when she first met the ship's AI. Was it hatred, or was it love? Liara had not responded at all. Harria had to leave.

She had gone back to her computer and searched one final time. Liara's web presence was clean, professional. There were not multiple avenues to message her - just the one form, with the small fee. It was exorbitant, more than a room in the nicest hotel in the galaxy, more than a very good gun.

It was nothing. Harria paid it, and sat in front of the blank screen for a long time. She felt stretched and hollow.

_I hope this message reaches you. I hope you are well. I am leaving the Citadel. I can't express how badly I would like to see you. Cerberus has me on a tight timeline but when I can get free I will come to Illium and I hope you will see me then. I can set up an encrypted line if you will take a call. You are the most important thing to me and I must see you if it can possibly be arranged._

_Your friend and loving companion,_

_Shepard_

It didn't seem like enough. It was not poetry. Would Shepard have written more eloquently? Should she had been more expressive? _The most important thing to me._ Harria could batter her feelings into the shape of words. These would have to do. _Loving companion._ It was not _I love you._ Harria's heart swelled and then broke. What was love when she had never seen its object? Who was Liara? Had Shepard had her? Would Harria ever know why Shepard loved her? Did Liara love Shepard, too? Harria felt like an impersonator, an imposter, signing that message as even Liara’s friend.

She deleted _and loving companion,_ and sent the message. Then she went to the corner. This time she faced it, standing, resting her forehead against the smooth, cold metal. She could feel it distinctly.

She laid her face against it and waited for the darkness.

* * *

“Do you know what booze is?”

Grunt looked up from whatever he was doing - a simple virtual simulation, nearly a logic puzzle, with the addition of explosives and guts. “Booze?” he returned, curiosity evident.

“Come on,” Harria said, and led him to her cabin. The built-in seats were too small for him, but Harria had a detachable crate with emergency supplies and they pulled that up to the table.

Harria dug around in her shelving and found the goods - two shot glasses, and undiluted firewhiskey. A sissy drink for the krogan baby.

She poured the whiskey into the glasses and gestured for him to pick his up. His round eyes considered her, and then he picked his up and downed the shot without expression.

“Oh, well - you're supposed to - never mind.” Harria took her shot, and poured them another. “Hold up, hold it up and -” she clinked their glasses together. “To kicking ass and pretending we can control our downward spiral.” They took the shots at the same time.

Grunt rumbled. “What is this supposed to do?”

Harria shrugged. “It goes into our nerve cells and makes them act differently. Mostly it makes everything more tolerable. It makes some people angry, or sad, or really fucking happy. Or all of them at once.”

“Are you sure this works on me?” Grunt asked her.

“I looked it up,” Harria said, waggling her eyebrows. The alcohol rushed through her body, numbing. Something she couldn't look up was whether the alcohol would work on her, but it seemed that it did. “Thanks for helping me kill this bottle.”

Grunt took the bottle in his big, dexterous fingers and poured their third shot. “Why have you chosen me?” he said.

“You looked as lonely as me,” Harria said.

Grunt frowned.

“I wanted to hear about your lady loves.”

“Lady loves?” Grunt repeated.

“Have you ever seen a woman krogan?”

Grunt shook his head. “I understand that they do not travel the stars.”

“Aw. I bet there about a hundred lady krogans ready to jump your hot bod the minute they see you.”

Grunt hummed at that and poured yet another shot for them. Harria considered the glass. Misery overwhelmed prudence and she raised it to Grunt. “To prolific future mating and - um -”

“The destruction of our enemies,” Grunt provided, and Harria grinned at him. She slapped the glass onto the table and then stood and stretched. The gash in her side separated a little, stickily. “Look at this, Grunt,” she said, raising her shirt. “What the hell. At least when you woke up your body worked.”

Grunt looked at her wordlessly. “Are you going to start crying?” he asked finally.

“No,” she said sulkily, and sat back down.

“You are a machine,” he observed. “Your wound does not bleed.”

Harria rubbed her forearms. “Just halfway.” She smiled. “The walking dead. Look.” She pulled out a knife - Shepard had never lost the habit of carrying one, the only weapon that never ran out of ammo - and nicked her pinkie finger. “I bleed.”

Grunt reached out and touched the blood. He raised it to his nose and sniffed it. “Cerberus will heal you,” he said.

Harria scoffed. “Cerberus can't even get my head right. When you remember the stories Okeer put in your head, you can tell the difference between your own thoughts and - the stories, right?” She slurred a little. “Take another shot.”

Grunt raised the bottle instead to his lips and slurped it.

When he put it down, he looked at her. She said, “When I talk I can't even tell what is Shepard and what's me.”

“You are Shepard,” Grunt told her.

“Bullshit,” she said. “Shepard was a fucking hero. I'm just - a corpse - with the fucking delusion of competence. I don't even believe me.”

“If they made you think, why do you keep saying that you do not work for them?"

“Because that's what fucking Shepard would say. That's what she would do.”

Grunt raised the bottle again. Shepard's omni-tool beeped, and she tapped it impatiently. A personal message.

It was a link to a data line, and a time. Tomorrow. Fucking Lawson, micromanaging her schedule. She scrolled back up, clicking the message metadata.

It was from Liara.

“Fuck fuck fuck,” Harria muttered.

Grunt looked at her blankly.

“Do you have this idea - this vision - someone out there, who is so perfect that she couldn't be real?”

“Yes,” Grunt said.

“Does she have a name? What does she look like?”

“Not a name. But she is beautiful. She waits for me.”

“Yeah,” Harria murmured. She returned to the message, scrolling frantically. Nothing else. No scrap from Liara. “They had to make us with that - that little flaw, to make us more believable. To balance out all the shit and hate and violence. So that we wouldn't just - fucking - just give up.”

“Something to fight for,” Grunt said.

“Other than the sport of it,” Harria agreed. Her heart was bursting. She rubbed her face, hating the scars. “Something actually good.”

“What is her name?”

“Liara,” Shepard said. “Her name is Liara.”

* * *

 

When Harria connected, the video line was empty and silent. She sat at her desk and waited.

Finally she stood and paced. Minutes dragged.

The connection buzzed, and a bust of Liara appeared. Harria launched herself into her seat.

Liara's face was blurry, barely recognizable. Harria wondered if it was the connection at her end. Maybe her scars wouldn't be visible with a connection this bad.

“Tali said someone was walking around with your face,” Liara said. Her voice was smooth and low, and came through clearly.

“Liara. Thanks for taking the call.”

Liara didn't respond immediately. Harria struggled to find words. “Cerberus says that I am - that they reconstructed Shepard's body.”

“I saw your body. Saren destroyed you. It was impossible to tell your parts from his. You were dead for a week before the keepers found you.”

 _Oh_ , Harria thought. That was how she died. She lept through the window, and she and Saren fought in zero g within the Citadel's arms. Why hadn't they given her that memory, the memory of her body? She already knew she was dead.

“I remember most things,” Harria said.

“You are Cerebus’s pet. The Illusive Man has made you as a mockery, a symbol and nothing more. Your body is more machine than organic.”

Harria turned her left hand, examining the gaping slash that ran from her wrist to her first finger. She clenched her hand into a fist, and pain lanced up her arm through her elbow.

“Please. Cerberus made me to love you. I don't know why I do - I - you are almost a stranger to me, but my whole being wants you.”

“My Shepard would fight that. She would resist mind control - she would take her own fate in her hands.”

“But you loved her first, didn't you?” Harria could not tell if she was getting through. Liara's face was expressionless through the flickering connection. “You loved her, and then she loved you. You fell in love. Didn't you? I want that. I want a chance to fall in love with you, Liara. I think -”

The transmission cut off, and Harria stood. She put her hands against the wall and finished the thought out loud. “I think you could love me, too. You are the only dream they gave me that I know I want.”


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All right people. Ready for the big dive? 
> 
> Any and all feedback is highly encouraged at this point. I haven't 100% committed to any of the many possible paths before us. There is guaranteed angst but the possibility of a happy ending. What would you like to see?

The music hit Harria like a wall when she opened the door to the Afterlife club. It was easy to find the _de facto_ ruler of Omega inside, although when Aria T’Loak’s bouncer shoved a scanner in her face she almost blew his hand off. She wasn't trying to keep a low profile, exactly - it was more his attitude than anything. She hadn't considered it before, but when faced with someone as dominant as she was, it turned out that she reacted strongly. Badly. It was a good thing for their collaboration with her that Lawson and the Illusive Man were polite.

After the scan was finally complete, Aria made a full circuit around her. “T’Soni’s mate,” she said, calculating.

 _Mate?_ So Harria had been right - at least a little. Wasn't the word _bondmate?_

Harria clenched her hand into a fist and said, “Glad to know I'm famous for something other than saving the galaxy.” _What does mate mean?_

“She picked well, foolish girl,” Aria concluded. “Delusions of importance are always so compelling in humans. Why are you here?”

* * *

After the confrontation on Omega, when Garrus was finally onboard the Normandy, Harria asked him about Liara. “Have you seen her? How is she?”

Garrus shrugged, his gesture expansive. He was standing, back straight, surveying the starscape before them. “She wasn't close with the rest of the crew, you know,” he said. His voice was low. “Except for Tali. She hasn't spoken with you?”

“Once,” Harria said. She pushed away from the handrail, and slumped down into a seating position against the bulkhead. She hadn't told anyone but Grunt how separate from Shepard she felt. She could almost remember everything, after all - why invite questioning? Especially from Cerberus.

But Garrus felt friendly. She liked his smooth nobility. It was something to aspire to. Harria did not feel very noble, but maybe Shepard had been. Maybe Garrus and she had been friends.

And if she told Garrus, he would stand behind her. He'd just lost his whole crew. He didn't have anything but her. Would he tell her if Liara had loved her back, as she suspected she had? _What does mate mean?_

He took the seat on the stairs next to her, almost close enough that they were touching. “Last I heard, she was on Illium,” he said. “Working as an information broker. I sold her some stuff, but that was, oh, months ago.”

“And you didn't talk?”

Garrus looked at her sidelong. “I saw her. She is -” he stopped, and looked at her. “She hasn't told you - anything?”

Harria sat up straighter. “What do you mean? She said - she -” Harria stopped herself. Liara's theories about who Harria was, that she was a pet - clearly Garrus did not agree, or had not heard the same. Yet. “I don't know. She didn't seem to want to talk with me.”

“She has changed. Become cold. I would have thought she would want you back, but,” here the shrug came again. “Asari can be odd bedmates. My friend also mated an asari lady, and she left him to raise their babe. Supposedly she didn't want her daughter to lose her father when she was so young. Better to not have one at all.”

“That sucks,” Harria said. “I bet he was young, too.”

“Thirty,” Garrus confirmed. “Younger than you, Shepard.”

Harria looked at his alien, glinting eyes. “Bullshit. I'm about two months old,” she said.

Garrus rumbled and shook his head.

“Never mind,” Harria said. “How did you get a crew together, anyway?”

Garrus paused, and then he answered. “Not so differently than how you did, the first time. You demonstrate to people that you know what you're doing, and some are compelled to follow.”

* * *

  
Liara did let her into her apartment, when she made it to Illium. The first impression Harria had was light and angularity, all wide spaces and subtle design. The sun was bright through the two-story windows, the sky a lovely purple.

And then her eyes fell on Liara, the first time she had seen her in her life.

She was perfect. Her eyes and her lips - the cheeks - she was the most beautiful thing. “Wow,” Harria said before she thought. “You are so beautiful.”

Liara's eyes flickered up Harria's body, and her hand lifted as if to touch her. Harria's gaze drifted down, and her heart stopped still.

She searched for words, but none made themselves known. _Two years_ , she was thinking. This was someone else's child.

It didn't matter. Liara had let her into her apartment. She looked around, her eyes skittering over the furniture. Did someone live here with Liara?

She dragged her eyes back to Liara's. Liara was watching her.

“Hey, um - I brought you. Some.” She faltered, and then rushed on. “I feel like there's nothing I can do to make this better. I'm sorry I died. I am ready to - I want to -” She stopped again, and then she just opened the crate in her arms and offered it to Liara. “So this is just what I thought of.”

Liara took a deep breath, staring as if memorized at the box’s contents. Her eyes were big, disproportionately. Harria had not expected to be so struck by her alienness. The other asari she’d met had not unsettled her like this.

Finally Liara nodded. “Thank you. Put them down - there.” She gestured at a side table.

Harria stumbled over herself to do so. She took a moment to arrange the bouquet, to separate the flowers from each other. She could feel Liara's presence behind her, close, but she wanted each moment to last. How long until she was ejected from this apartment? Would this be the last time that Harria could ever feel this closeness, the heat of her love so bright in her chest? Tears stung her eyes.

When she turned Liara put her hand around her neck, cupping her close as if to kiss. _To meld_ , Harria realized - not her memory. Did Cerberus put the idea in her mind, or was it from Shepard? Was it her own? She fought the urge to pull away.

Liara's eyes were vulnerable now, tearing like Harria's. “Is this OK?” Liara asked her, and Harria nodded.

The sensation was strange, tickling. At first it prodded her, and then requested entrance. Harria opened herself to it, and then Liara rushed in.

She lost herself. She became nothing, a floating speck in a black universe. And then some substance was restored, and as Harria remembered herself, she remembered Liara. They were intertwined completely. There was not being without Liara. Harria clung to her with the sense that it was too tight, but nothing else made sense here, in this black and formless world.

 _You are made of paper_ , Liara said, and the derision made Harria collapse in on herself. To become smaller, so that Liara could not see how little she actually was.

 _I don't know what's happening,_ Harria told her. A slight flutter of emotion - panic - and then Liara released her more and she remembered. _Oh, you are my goddess. You are my sun, you are the song that rushed through my veins when I breathed my first breath, and I will love you until my last._

Liara was more distinct, and around them formed a new scene. Liara was not pregnant. They were sitting on a bench in a sculpture garden. Liara's homeworld, Harria realized without knowing how. Around them bloomed yellow flowers of all styles, from bushes that overflowed the walkways. The yellow of Liara's shirt their last time.

Harria put her arm around Liara, craving her closeness, the sense of being nothing without coexisting. Liara said, _You do not know what those flowers mean. Shepard sent you as a message._

 _A gift,_ Harria said, pleading. _Please accept me._

 _I have all I want from her,_ Liara said, but she revealed her loneliness. Asari did not always keep their mates as long as it took to bear children, but Liara had wanted to keep Shepard. She had imagined Shepard's delight as her belly grew. She had imagined Shepard's arms around her, looking in the mirror. When Liara had check-ups with doctors, she always imagined telling Shepard what she'd learned. A heartbeat. Fingers and toes. Two weeks, or sooner, or later. Your baby knows best when she wants to come.

Harria put her hand on Liara's stomach, and now it was swollen with child. Liara looked up at her, and their lips met, dreamlike. So this _was_ Shepard's baby. Harria's, almost. Harria's heart broke for Liara's loneliness, for the ache that Shepard's loss left in her.

 _You said you'd come back._ Some of the haze lifted, and Harria could feel Liara's lips on hers, different from the meld. Liara kissed her deeply, drinking her, tongue and teeth and desperate gasps. Liara's stomach pressed against Harria's. And then Liara pulled Harria back into the meld, although she would have liked to have stayed with Liara in that kiss.

 _I'm here now,_ Harria told Liara.

_Don't pretend. You don't think that you are her, either, Harria Shepard._

Harria withdrew from Liara, and Liara’s hand came up to keep her close. _Thank god that you want me anyway._ Liara did not respond. _I will be a good parent. A good partner. I want to be everything to you. Show me how to love you._

 _You defile the memory of her,_ Liara told her, but she showed her everything, and then released her enough into her body to do what she had asked. Harria pulled Liara's pants down and pushed her onto her knees by the couch, following in suit, bending Liara down and grinding her hips against Liara's backside.

Everywhere that Harria's fingers touched turned to goosebumps under her fingers, and Harria could feel her own touch as if it was on her skin. Liara’s belly was heavy, stretched and overfull. Her pregnancy was not difficult - Liara was healthy, the baby was healthy - but it was uncomfortable and long, despite the comfort of having Shepard's impression inside her. The baby knew Liara, and Shepard. She would be born knowing her father. Liara had not decided whether she would tell her that her father lived, after all.

Liara showed her - Shepard would talk, she would build a fantasy. Harria found the words easily. _You're already so full of me, and you still want more. You want me everywhere, don't you? You want me deep in your cunt, and stretching your belly until you get so - until you come so hard._ Shepard caressed her ass and wrapped an arm around Liara. She could only reach halfway. _You're mine,_ she thought, and the power of her own conviction made it more real. How better to claim her, than this? How could she be more Harria's, with Shepard's baby inside her, and her hand running up Liara's back to her shoulder? With her body bent slightly over Liara, and the urgency of sex harsh and close between them. Harria found her cunt with the other hand.

The scene faded into the meld, black oblivion wrapping Harria's mind. _It's so dark,_ she thought. At least there was thought here. Harria had not known before.

 _I am not sharing myself,_ Liara told her.

_What are our bodies doing?_

Liara released her from, and her thumb was deep in Liara, her fingers brushing gently against her dry ridges. The sensation was distinct against Harria's clit through the meld. _You are so full._ Harria's hips rocked forward without thinking, and Liara arched her back, offering more. She was gripping the couch to make the job of holding herself easier.

Harria put her hand on Liara's hip and switched to her fingers, fitting two easily. The sensation of being penetrated was so intense that it weakened Harria's knees. _You,_ Harria thought, and then she drove deeper. Liara was crying into the couch, and the sounds just barely reached her through the fog of the meld. _You, Liara._

Harria slipped back out and ran her wet fingers over Liara's ridges, her thumb a poor substitute inside, and Liara told her, _Yes._ Harria's core pulsed with the closeness, and Liara's ridges exploded, a powerful sensation on Harria's clit. Then Liara showed her another image. Deep purple, and Shepard's cunt, full of Liara. _Straddle me. I need to feel you against me. I need to be inside you._

Liara pulled herself up and lay on the couch, and the baby crushed her under its weight. _Our baby,_ Liara said. Harria pulled off her pants, hoping that Liara would not see the deep scarring on her right leg. With the thought, Harria realized, she drew Liara’s attention to it. At least she couldn't see her side with her shirt on.

 _Your face is so perfect, lovely,_ Liara told her. Every part of her was numb and tingling. Her back ached. She tried to kiss Liara, but Liara’s rejection was a slap, and she stumbled backward.

 _Come here,_ Liara demanded, and Harria put one leg over her legs and slid up. She put down her knee, and then raised it, her leg rubbing painfully against the couch, and then she found Liara's need with her cunt and again the scene faded.

_What are you doing?_

_I am taking you,_ Liara told her. _Like I took Shepard the first time, except you don't get me._

_What are you doing with me once I'm taken?_

_She said it was draining_. Harria saw a snap image, Shepard's eyes glowing bluish in the ship's lights.

_She was cruel to you._

_You are a million pieces and no whole_ , Liara said to her. _You aren't a person - you're an art project. Do you know who Jason is?_

Harria grasped for the memory. It didn't exist. _Who is Jason?_

_The street rat you killed to intimidate his gang. You were eleven years old. It was the first time you killed an innocent, unarmed person, but not the last._

_Everything makes sense except you, Liara. They built everything right. I am ready to do whatever I need to do. But I do not know you, and I don't know why Shepard loved you. The feeling is there but the memories aren't. Show me._

Liara showed her a watering-hole. She showed her a bed with white sheets and black sand, and a single white lily. And then she showed her Shepard's body kneeling over Liara's, their bodies sweaty and pounding against the cold metal floor, and the feeling of having her - of knowing what Liara wanted, the stormy force that was Shepard's soul.

Harria felt a glow burst through, and Liara let her back into her body. At first she could not say who was orgasming. Liara was inside her, and Harria's hips ached as if she had been rocking for a long time. Sensation exploded along Liara's palpus and in her ridges, and in Harria's clit and inside, where Liara was still stroking hard. She was so wet, and Liara's body fit tightly inside.

 _You're too good,_ Harria said, and Liara pushed more of the sensation on Harria, while releasing her more than ever before. Or was this the sharing meld? Liara had lost control. Harria saw her sweetness, the innocence that had almost entirely been eclipsed by mourning and strife.

Harria rocked twice more into Liara, and Liara jerked forward inside, making her hips pull into Liara's ridges. Her belly touched Liara’s swollen one, her hot wetness subsumed Liara's ridges, and her clit rubbed against her, lightning touches. She broke. The pleasure turned from urgency to completion. Her body squeezed Liara's palpus, and Liara rippled and then stroked her again. She could clearly see her own face, distorted in ecstasy. Shepard's face.

Liara's voice was clear outside of the meld. “Yeah, baby, come on me, let me give you this.” Liara was against her opening, hard inside her, tight and commanding.

“You,” Shepard managed. Her throat was dry. “Liara, I love you.”

The sensation faded to aftershocks, and the sharing meld changed back onto the dark one. Liara withdrew from her body, and Shepard felt the loss. She wanted Liara to stay. She wanted Liara's dark purple against her wetness, the fullness of her inside.

“Off,” Liara told her, and Shepard fumbled to stand.

Liara turned on her side, and Shepard went to her knees. She put her hand on Liara's, and Liara told her, _You can kiss me now._

Shepard kissed her, and as she did the meld faded. They couldn't stay like this forever, but having her mind to herself was strange. Despite how Liara had kept herself separate from Harria, she still felt like a part of her now.

“You are so good,” Harria said again, letting her body into a sitting position next to Liara. Liara's eyes fluttered. Her hand reached out, and Harria caught it and put it against her cheek. Against her sores. She felt inadequate.

“You are so close to her,” Liara breathed.

“I am her gift to you,” Harria repeated. Liara was fading fast. She kissed her palm and up her arm. “I love you.” Liara's eyes closed, and Harria sat there, her body cooling rapidly. Her stomach was warm with afterglow. She put her free hand between her legs. So this part of her worked, too. How much of the wetness was hers, and how much was left inside by Liara? She slipped her finger inside herself, remembering Liara's palpus. She wanted Liara inside a thousand more times. She wanted Liara _now._

She pulled her finger out, closed her legs, and ground her hips impatiently. Her nipples were hard. She licked her own fingers and imagined Liara's palpus in her mouth. Then she settled back against the couch. She could wait.

She had never imagined that Liara was pregnant. Had that been what Garrus had dodged around? The more she thought about it, the more obvious it was. Garrus had covered for Liara, in case Liara never told Harria about Shepard's baby. It seemed unfair and very reasonable. Of course when Harria found out, she would want to be involved. _I will be a good parent,_ she'd told Liara. How presumptuous. Shepard was _the worst._

Why hadn't Cerberus told her? Was this why Harria had woken with such a longing for Liara - was it because Liara was pregnant with Shepard's child? Maybe a trace of romance hid behind Lawson's calculating exterior. Although, if that was the case, why would she offer herself to Harria? Maybe she had not planned to follow through. Maybe it had been another test, and nothing more.

When Liara woke, would she expel Harria from her apartment? Would they move to the bed and finish what they'd started? Maybe Liara would start the meld again, although it seemed to have drained her.

Harria felt tired, too, but energized. Her body wanted to move. To jump, to shout. To fuck. To fight. Harria had a little blue baby that was coming - now, soon. With Liara, the most beautiful, sweetest, smartest killer in the galaxy. Their baby would be the first monarch, the emperor of the first galactic dictatorship. It all seemed obvious. They'd already gotten through the hard part.

“Why are you smiling?” Liara whispered. Her eyes were open, a little. Maybe she hadn't been fully asleep.

“Planning your baby's rise to galactic domination,” she told Liara.

“I don't think she will want your input,” Liara told her.

Harria's smile did not flicker. “Oh, but my plans are so good that she won't be able to disregard them. I have the Council out by the time she's fifteen. A little chaos, and then a force of order comes in. Everyone will welcome it.”

“What about the Collectors?”

Harria waved her hand. “Long gone. That's my job.”

“You've built out,” Liara said. She squeezed Harria's shoulder.

“Oh,” Harria responded. “Have I? Is it an improvement?”

Liara rolled her eyes. “Shepard would be pleased.” Her humor faded. “Your skin is lighter and you are less hairy.”

“Huh,” Harria said. She brushed her hand over her forearm. “Barely.”

“Your name is Christian,” Liara said. “Do you know why?”

Land mines, everywhere. Harria supposed she should be grateful that Liara would make the effort to educate her.

“Let me guess,” she said. “I made it up when I enlisted.”

Surprise flickered across Liara's face. “That's right. What's your real last name?”

“Hussein,” Harria guessed. “Abdul.”

“Majeed,” Liara said.

“Fun. Nice that racial prejudice doesn't exist in the galaxy. Just on Earth.”

Liara slipped her hand under Harria's hair, touching her head. “You went far in the Alliance. And now, with Cerberus.”

“Good thing I changed my name,” Harria said. “Or maybe that's why they liked me. A little danger.” _Maybe that's why you like me._

“Probably,” Liara said. “Will you sleep if we go upstairs?”

It was almost an invitation to bed. “What if I can't sleep?” Harria asked her, laughing. “It is the afternoon.”

“You're not tired?” Liara asked. Her eyes fluttered.

“I am not sure if I will ever sleep again,” Harria said. “I think I did enough sleeping the last two years to make up the next ten.”

“I can hear you thinking,” Liara murmured. Her eyes were closing again. She wrapped her arms around Harria's head and said, “Stop thinking, my dear Shepard. Let me sleep.”

Harria closed her eyes and relaxed into the touch. It was too warm to be real. She nodded to Liara, nuzzling closer. Liara's arms around her relaxed, and Harria caught them before they dangled, holding them up, around her shoulders. Around them settled Liara's biotic barrier, a blue halo.


	9. Chapter 9

The sun was setting when Liara stirred. Harria turned to look at her, but the first thing she checked was her omni-tool. She groaned and stretched, and Harria felt like an alert guard-dog, awaiting instruction.

“I need to go to my office,” Liara told her.

“OK,” Harria said. “Sounds good.” So they wouldn't make it to bed after all.

Liara cupped Harria's face. “I need some time to myself, to think about you, and us. Can you give me that time?”

Harria couldn't help but look down at their bodies, unclothed from the waist. “Well, yes,” she said. It’d felt like the hardest part was over.

“So you should wait for me to message you,” Liara said slowly.

“Yeah,” Harria said. She couldn't suppress a helpless frown. “Why is this happening?”

Liara sighed and sat up on the couch. She stood and found her pants, and Harria scrambled up too.

“I know that this is painful, but - you can't just erase two years of mourning. And you are not her, not fully.” Liara's eyes passed over the bouquet of lilies on the table near the door, and then she looked back at Harria. “I can't help but feel that I'm being unfaithful by letting you in.”

It would have been impossible to maintain, but Harria regretted not pretending to be Shepard. Everyone else believed her. Why had she been so honest with Liara?

Instead Liara had stripped her bare and left her naked and unwanted. Nearly literally. Harria found her pants with shaking hands and pulled them on. Her chest was empty and each breath was trembling.

She had just wanted Liara to want her for who she was - not the person who’d died, but Harria herself. Of course Liara wanted Shepard. She wanted the mother of her baby, not a constructed mass of flesh and metal and bone, with training videos and overheard conversations for memories. Not this.

Liara caught her as she turned to the door, her hand behind her neck. Harria flinched away from her eyes, black, the request to meld. _No._ Liara's face was unreadable as she released her. Harria fled.

As she tried to track down the justicar on Illium, Harria turned over that flinch again and again in her mind. She did not want to be stripped down by Liara. She'd already felt naked. But that was not why she flinched. Liara was more alien than ever, with her eyes black and voracious. But she was beautiful, and Harria wanted her - Harria loved her.

Why did she flinch? The meld was exactly what would have made it right again. Liara would have let her back in, if she'd felt Harria's misery through the meld. Harria did not find any words to convince her, but with the meld she would not have needed to. Liara had not caught her to say goodbye. She had caught her, like earlier that afternoon, because Harria had withdrawn and Liara did not want her to leave. Liara could tell her a million reasons that she did not want to have her, but at the end of it all, Liara _did_ want her. She was better than nothing. She was better than dead, if only barely.

But once the door closed, Harria could not go back. That flinch - and fleeing - maybe it had ruined any chance Harria would have had otherwise. She had promised Liara that she'd let Liara contact her. So she burned time on Illium. She hung around bars. She played cat-and-mouse with asari commandos and asked everyone she saw about Liara. An information broker, now. A pureblood and a Matron - so young! Just shows that there's something wrong with them. It was a human, though. Who? Who are you? Are you looking for her? Her office is just there. _Why_ are you looking for her?

Harria vacillated rapidly between depression and exuberance. On the one hand, she was trapped on Illium with very little to do. There was a galaxy to save, but Liara was going to have Shepard's baby and one week wouldn't change the course of history, would it? And on the other hand, Harria could almost feel Liara's baby in her arms. She imagined telling the baby everything that she was. With the possibility presented to her, Harria wanted a daughter. But maybe Liara would not let her near Shepard's child.

Harria had not done anything wrong. But she hadn't done anything right, except maybe the flowers. Except that Liara _had_ wanted sex from her, and what sex it had been, although Harria had been present for only brief windows. Liara had dominated the entire exchange. Harria wondered what Shepard would have done. Would she have fought Liara when the meld consumed her? Would she have asserted herself more strongly?

What if it had been a reunion of lovers, rather than the first time? Liara had penetrated Harria with the confidence of knowing that she was wanted. Shepard must have liked it, too. The entire exchange was so unexpected and far distant from Harria's limited range of experience, and she had no memories to fall back on. But her fingers had moved in a practiced gesture. Shepard had known what she was doing. How did that work? Harria replayed snippets of their meld and wondered who she was.

Finally Harria got a call from Liara asking her to come to her office. It was early in the day and Harria was in the space between a hangover and drunkenness, committed to neither. She flicked her cigarette away and called a cab, and then she ran the entire distance from the packed terminal to Liara's office.

An asari stopped her at the door. “Who are you?”

“I - uh, she's expecting me.”

“What is your name?”

“Shepard.” Harria looked impatiently over the assistant's shoulder. Liara's office overlooked a trading floor. Not the most glamorous of locations, but the windows opened up to the sky. Like her apartment. Flat? Condo? You couldn't see the stars, though. The lights of Illium were too bright.

The assistant was giving her a look that could either mean she was identifying the weak spots in her armor to help flay her alive when the time came, or that she wanted to fuck her. Probably the first.

Finally she turned to the door and opened it, and followed Harria inside. Liara was mid-threat on a call, and Harria waited until she finished it. Utterly terrifying woman. Dangerous probably to be anywhere near. Harria could not help the eager grin that plastered itself onto her face.

“Shepard, this is my assistant, Nyxeris,” Liara told her when she cut off the transmission, taking a seat behind her desk. “I thought if you insisted on hanging around, I could use your help on something. I am looking for a senior agent of the Shadow Broker, called the Observer. Nyxeris has identified five suspects for me.” From behind the desk, you couldn't see her pregnancy. You could, however, see the flickers of the biotic barrier that clung to her skin. Protection - against what? Did Liara expect an assassin’s strike? The barrier was active even in sleep. Harria remembered how it had settled around their bodies. Liara had wanted to protect Harria. The three of them.

Nyxeris stepped forward. “A krogan, a turian, a salarian, a batarian and a vorcha.”

“Neither of us should be seen accessing the information terminals, but a human drunk would not draw attention.”

Harria nodded. “Righto. Thanks a lot.”

“I'm going to send you the locations right now,” Liara said, and manipulated her computer. “And an appropriate hack for each one. Just pick the right hack and download the information. You can call me directly. For this.”

Harria’s enthusiasm was rapidly waning. “I... Cerberus had leads for me here. I've been catching up with friends.”

Liara raised an eyebrow. “I've had no fewer than three friendly warnings about a stalker, Shepard.”

Harria made a disgusted sound in her throat. Her left arm tensed and flexed, rippling muscle, painful. “All right, you've made yourself clear.” She stood up and stretched. Her body ached. Her arm kept flexing, without her consent. “I'll do your hacking thing.”

“The Observer is extremely dangerous,” Liara said. “Do not underestimate him.”

“ _I'm_ extremely dangerous,” Harria said, and Liara frowned at her. She sauntered out of Liara's office and down the stairs, and simmered with the indignity of their encounter at every datapoint. Most of the terminals were on the trading floor below Liara's office, and she pointedly and pointlessly avoided looking at the window. A drunken stalker. It couldn't get any better than that.

Finally she connected their call line. “Liara, the Observer is a woman. All of Nyxeris's suspects are male. Do you think -”

“Goddess,” Liara said, and then called. “Nyxeris? Will you come here?”

Harria said, “Wait, don't - let me -”

The line disconnected, and through Liara's window Harria saw the flash of biotics. “Fuck fuck fuck fuck,” Harria muttered, and dashed across the floor and up the stairs.

The door opened at her touch, and Nyxeris was flying across the room, aided by a mass effect field. Harria got two pot shots in, and then Harria was flung into the air and Liara brought down Nyxeris's barrier. Liara raised her own pistol and fired unerringly.

Gravity re-exerted itself, and Harria slammed painfully against the ground. “Ow,” she complained, standing. “Are you all right?” She hadn't left her body during that exchange. It was too quick. Usually she snapped out quickly, though. She didn't understand why Shepard hadn't bothered to help her.

Liara was irritated. “Of course.”

Harria's body was rushing. “This shit is too dangerous. Your own assistant? What the hell are you doing?”

Rather than flaring to meet Harria's anger, Liara softened. She sat back down. “The Shadow Broker - has my friend. I lost him just a few months after you died. On a mission. I have heard that he is alive but not what has happened to him.”

Harria studied her. “Shouldn't you just - negotiate for him? Is this - some weird vendetta?” She took the seat across from Liara, ignoring the pooling blood from Nyxeris's body behind her. She wasn't a janitor.

“The Shadow Broker will not negotiate. Shepard, he tried to sell your body to the Collectors directly. Cerberus had to extract you by force.” _Shepard_. Liara kept calling Harria that. Habit, or hope? Or was it for the benefit of the many listening devices that must be strewn about her office? Surely she knew that Harria was not Shepard, from the meld if nothing else.

“What about our baby?” Harria's heart dipped. That was fair, right? Because of the listening devices? Anyway, it was Harria's genes. She was genetically identical to Shepard. Somehow it seemed like it was the genes that mattered least.

Liara's eyes hardened. “I am pregnant, not disabled. Shepard, would you abandon your mission for this?”

The framing of the question made Harria think she should say _yes._ But Liara's eyes flashed with cunning. It was a test. Would Shepard have set everything aside for a family with Liara? They had conceived their daughter together, before Shepard's death. Shepard would have known about the baby. Right? And she had chosen to fight Saren anyway.

Shepard had faced a much greater enemy than the Collectors. She'd had the fate of the galaxy in her hands. The coming of the Reapers. What were a few human colonies, compared to that? No matter how horrific their imprisonment, their torture… their deaths.

What was death, to the possibility of life? Harria knew the face of death and did not fear it. In fact, she had waited for it. But since finding Liara here, she had stopped actively embracing death. She did not wait for the darkness anymore. Life had won her over.

Harria would not answer for Shepard, even if Liara had asked the question of her. She had to answer for herself.

First she'd ask Liara to live with her daughter on the Normandy. But if Liara wouldn't come? Harria imagined hanging around Illium for another two years. One week had been bad enough. Harria craved the fight. She craved importance, impact. If confined to Illium, she would meteorically spiral. It was already happening.

Liara was comparing her vendetta against an underworld information broker to the menace of Collectors. Harria instinctively scoffed at the comparison, but she shouldn't. Shepard's grandiosity was more a trap than Harria had thought. Maybe she inflated the threat of the Collectors. Maybe she underestimated the Shadow Broker. She should respect Liara enough to let her judge her own priorities.

“I would hope that I could find a way to have both,” Harria answered finally.

“That is what I am doing,” Liara said. It was the right answer. Harria relaxed and watched as Liara circled the desk and drew Harria to her feet. She felt lightheaded. “Harria, I wanted your baby from the first time our bodies met. I wanted you more than I'd ever wanted anything. But we were only together for a few months, and most of it was hard. If you were Shepard, I am still unsure if I would want to take the risk of loving you. You invite disaster. You are a walking supernova.”

Harria leaned into her body and they kissed. “Don't love me, then. Just have me.”

Liara put one hand on her chest as if to push her away, but she didn't. “They are the same,” she whispered.

If this was Liara's way to break it off, she was doing a terrible job. “Well, I love you, and I'm about ready to do whatever you ask me to do. Do you want me to fuck you on your desk, so that all of Illium can see us? Do you have a broom closet?”

Liara laughed, but her eyes were watery.

“Liara, you know, when I woke up I didn't want to be alive.” Harria swallowed and reconsidered her words, although it was already too late. She shouldn't try to guilt Liara into this. Even if this was her only opportunity to make her case.

“Please don't say that,” Liara said.

“I mean, I liked fighting.” _It isn't me that fights._ “And booze, and food, and sleeping I guess.” Harria faltered. “I bet I'd like sex if I'd thought of it.” She had lost the thread of her argument. She was trying to erase what she'd said, and in the process she had given the impression that she was a troll. _A krogan, like Grunt. Eat fuck fight. That's me._ “I get that asari are different from humans and, I guess, your daughter and me are completely different deals. And that she's much more important right now. I do want to, um,” Harria swallowed. Her mouth was dry. “I want you both to be happy and safe. And I want to be as close as I can possibly be to you, as long as it doesn't compromise those other two things.”

She had almost constructed an argument against herself. She fought the urge to keep talking.

Liara nodded, and Harria kissed her forehead and her lips and her neck, relishing the hitch of Liara's breath. She put her hands on Liara's upper arms. It felt like domination, although Harria knew it wasn't. “At least let me satisfy you,” Harria said. Her voice was growling in her throat.

“Not right now,” Liara said. She was smiling slightly. “Harria, I'm in labor.”

“Holy shit.” Harria's body went numb. She was gripping Liara's arms harder than she should, and she forced herself to release her grip. “Wha - what are we doing here?”

“I'm trying to decide whether I will bring you with me.”

“This whole day was about deciding - shit,” Harria cut herself off. “That's why you called me today?”

“That is why,” Liara told her.

“I've 95% failed. I'm completely self-obsessed. What - I'm still doing it.”

Liara smiled. “I think you are much cuter than Shepard. Breathe.”

Harria clenched her hands into fists and closed her mouth.

“You've 5% succeeded,” Liara said. “My standard is low.”

“Great,” Harria said. “How - how long?”

“I am not sure. Soon.”

“How long have you been in labor?” Harria was already typing into her omni-tool. Why hadn't she looked this up before? Because she hated reading and would much rather chain smoke broodily than know anything of relevance to her tiny existence. That was why.

Liara put her hand over the tool’s interface and it flickered away. “Breathe. Will you call us a cab?”

“Abso-fucking-lutely,” Harria said, and Liara released her arm. When she looked back up, Liara's eyes were dark. Harria flinched again, immediately hating herself for it, but Liara did not touch her with the meld. After a long moment, the black faded into her pupils.

“How is she?” Harria asked. She had not thought of it, but of course Liara would meld with her daughter. _I bet they are great friends,_ Harria thought, and then she wondered how much of a person the baby could be. Shepard had been dead for two years. Liara’d had this baby instead, a companion, a replacement. It seemed absurd that Liara would invite Harria to the birth of this baby. It was just because she looked like Shepard. Harria should keep that in her mind. _You are much cuter than Shepard._ Harria's head spun.

“She is fine.” Liara’s brow furrowed. “Uncomfortable.”

 _Did you tell her I will be there?_ “The cab’s coming in three minutes, but they didn't know if they should use the terminal over -”

“The roof,” Liara told her, and guided her out of the office and down the stairs. Harria typed clumsily into her omni-tool and drifted after her.

When the elevator door closed, Liara leaned into her, and Harria put her arm around her. Liara buried her face in Harria's chest. “OK,” Harria muttered, more to herself than to Liara. She felt like a million unconnected pieces. “What should I be doing?” she asked Liara.

The door opened and they stepped out on the roof. The city towered over them, and the air was crisp. Liara wasn't wearing an envirosuit, Harria realized, but the cab was already pulling up. Liara took the passenger’s seat and tapped her omni-tool against the interface. The location popped up affirmatively, and the cab lifted off.

Harria's hands settled on the controls. She was leaning forward, feeling helpless. “Shouldn't we be going faster?”

“Just relax,” Liara told her, smiling. “Lean back, dear, you're making the VI nervous.”

Harria put her hands on each knee and breathed out, and the VI stopped flickering. She looked at the nav terminal. “Wait, we are going to your apartment?”

Liara nodded and put her hand behind Harria's head comfortingly.

“Shouldn't we be going to a hospital?”

“Asari births are not dangerous,” Liara told her. “It will just be us, at the apartment.”

“Motherfucker,” Harria cursed. “Jesus Christ and all the angels.” She wasn't delivering an asari baby.

The VI flickered, and then beeped inquisitively. She leaned back and released the controls again.

Liara closed her eyes and sighed, and Harria waited impatiently. “You knew it was Nyxeris,” Harria said in a flash of understanding.

After a pause, Liara opened her eyes and said, “When she only identified men, I began to suspect. I had also heard that the Observer was a woman. I did not know that I was so high on the Shadow Broker’s list of priorities.”

“She barely put up a fight,” Harria said, but Liara had closed her eyes again. Melding again?

They pulled into Liara's cabport a few moments later. Harria sprung out of the cab, but Liara had already gotten out by the time she got around the car. They went straight up the stairs and to the bed, which had white sheets on it but no blankets.

It was warm enough. Liara sat at the foot of the bed and Harria went to her knees beside her and said, “OK, tell me what to do.”

Liara put her hand against Harria's cheek. “Nothing. I prepared this morning.”

Harria blew out a breath and grabbed Liara's hand. “So what's great about this is that you are totally fine and I am going to flip a shit.”

“Take off your suit,” Liara suggested. “And I will change.”

“Right,” Harria said, and stripped down to her underclothes. White cotton, like the sheets. Luxurious. Not standard Alliance issue. Short-sleeved and light. Liara changed into a robe.

They lay in the bed facing each other, and Harria bit her tongue and watched Liara's face. She came out of the meld rarely, long enough to connect with Harria. _Soon. We are fine._ Harria found her hands rubbing Liara's body, and Liara seemed to appreciate it so she kept doing it. Liara always had a presence, softly commanding, but right now she was almost glowing with serene confidence. Harria counted each freckle and waited for the world to end.

Finally, a hint of pain showed on Liara's face. She turned on her back, eyes closed, and Harria put her hands on the bed on either side of her head and asked what was wrong. She kept bizarrely expecting to snap out. Shepard should be here.

But she didn't snap out. Liara groaned, a long, painful sound, and then she opened her eyes and drew Harria into her meld.

She kept the meld open, and rather than Harria needing to cling to her as the only source of stability in a dark and formless universe, Harria balanced with her. The sharing meld. The fall was precipitous - off the sheer edge of a cliff, in the freezing snow, so thick that it obscured sight - in the fog, balanced on elevated rails, the rumble of an approaching train shaking the tracks under their feet - but their hands met and held the balance.

Liara was not as confident as she had looked. She requested strength at the same time that she apologized. She didn't think Harria would help her. She hadn't drawn Harria into their meld before this moment because - because of the flinch - because of Shepard. Shepard was so afraid of the meld. Liara had hurt her their first time, and then Liara lost that baby. It had been ugly and messy. They had only mated one other time, and _this_ baby - their daughter - she was so different, a child of love rather than rape. Still Shepard's. Not Harria's, although Harria was so close. Harria was not weathered or broken. She was fresh and hopeful, a blank slate. Unscarred by everything that had come before, although now she knew what it was.

This was what Liara had hoped to keep from her during their first meld. This was why she had kept Harria in the darkness. Her heart had been screaming their story, and she was embarrassed and ashamed of it. Liara's grip was tight and anxious around Harria's hands. Her arms trembled under their combined weight, poised between the rails.

 _Everything is OK. It was not so bad,_ Harria said to her, even though she had no idea how bad it had been. She squeezed Liara’s hands back.

All she got back from Liara was an outpouring of emotion. Affection and longing, mourning and loss, desperation, pain, a driving urge that Harria did not know.

_What do you need?_

_This._ Harria could feel her heart burning. They were entangled. It was not the mating meld, but it was closer than Harria had ever been before. Liara did not think to withhold herself, and Harria did not fight her. They dove between the train tracks, through the emptiness beneath, and into the earth, and there they found Liara's daughter.

She was fluttering anxiety, and together they embraced her. She expanded to accommodate them. _My only,_ she thought to them.

Harria echoed the thought. _My only._ Liara's daughter swirled in delight around her. _I can't wait to see you._

Liara squeezed them both tight, and then Harria was out of the meld. A gush of fluid touched her thighs. Liara was screaming. She rocked backward onto her heels and put her hands between Liara's legs to catch the baby.

She was encased entirely by a caul, and Shepard brought her up into her arms before Liara pushed the meld back onto her. There was an opening near the top of the caul, but Liara guided Shepard's hands to break the sac around her daughter's mouth first. It was paper-thin. In the slight meld, they all took their first breath, gasping, squalling. Shepard worked the break in the sac to give her more room, and Adiva twisted in her arms, vigorous and eager. Ready to leave. Ready to breathe.

“OK, sweetie,” Shepard said, and carefully removed the remainder of the caul from around her slippery, tiny body. She was blue and perfect.

Liara wasn't lying fully back, and Shepard passed Adiva to her, collapsing beside her into the bed. Liara turned into her, holding Adiva in her arms tightly between them. Shepard grasped helplessly at Liara's body, suddenly released and abandoned, cold, alone. Cloth pressed on all sides of her body.

Shepard pulled off her own shirt with one hand, and Adiva nuzzled into Liara's chest. Warm skin surrounded her. Harria pulled Liara closer. Their arms formed a comforting cocoon around their baby.

 _Better?_ Shepard asked.

 _My only,_ they answered her. _Yes._


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry in advance for the blatant beatings-over-the-head that pretty much everybody is about to experience.
> 
> Also, asari babies = every other species' babies except for humans in terms of birth and development. Hopefully this approach isn't going to bother anyone.

The meld had faded for the last time an hour before. Liara did not release Adiva. She had told Harria to run the bath, and Harria had found a blanket and stripped the sheets.

On the bedside table, there was a vacuum case with a dried flower. A white lily. Harria studied the flower while she replaced the sheets. Why did Liara have it? Had Shepard given her the flower? Harria had thought that Liara appreciated the gesture of bringing flowers - more than Harria had hoped, more than really made sense. Was that flower - so different than the Prothean relics that were scattered around the apartment, and yet somehow the same - frozen in an advanced state of decay, like Harria herself - the only flower Shepard had ever given Liara? Harria resolved to send her a flower every day.

She found Liara and Adiva in the bath, engrossed in each other. Adiva noticed Harria first, and called for her. “Ep!”  

Liara frowned at it, for some reason. Harria went to her knees and offered her hand, smiling in greeting. Adiva gripped the offered hand eagerly, and scrambled to stand in the slippery bath. She was so tiny, but a deep intelligence shone in her blue eyes and she had already stood up in the bed once. She was ready to run. Her head markings were darker than Liara's, and her skin had a deep purple undertone. She lacked the eyebrow-like markings that Liara had, but retained the freckles. Around her cheekbones, they darkened into dramatic flourishes that blended with the darker color of her tiny crests.

Liara asked, “Adiva, do you want Shepard to pick you up?”

Adiva grunted, and her foot slipped in the water. Her grip was tight, and Harria instinctively put her other hand in the bath to catch her. Adiva’s eyes blackened.

The meld was gentle. Adiva definitely wanted Harria to pick her up. As quickly as the communication happened, the meld dropped.

Harria said, “Absolutely, I will pick you up.” Adiva was very slippery, but Harria managed it somehow. Adiva put her arms around Harria's neck, trusting, tiny. Harria placed a kiss on Adiva's temple and closed her eyes. Adiva smelled like Liara and lavender and umami. She was far too soft. _My only._

Harria opened her eyes to see Liara covering her own face. “Hey, um,” she said, wanting to use a term of affection but unable to think of an appropriate one. “Liara, you are so tired. You should rest.”

Liara nodded and wiped the water from her face. Her eyes were red. Harria released Adiva with one hand to offer it to Liara, and then staggered with the force of Adiva's displeasure. They'd still been melding - Harria just hadn't felt it. She was swimming in a sea of melds and blue skin.

“Oh, my love, my sweet dove,” she cooed to Adiva. “It's OK.” She wasn't scared, though. “I won't let you go for even one moment.” Adiva cooed back, releasing her neck, and Harria let her down into a cradling position. Her face turned into Harria's breast, although she wasn't hungry and Harria had put back on her shirt. Harria felt a heavy blanket of exhaustion fall over them. Adiva's eyes closed.

“You will spoil her entirely,” Liara said faintly. She hadn't moved.

The meld faded and with it, the exhaustion. “That's my plan,” Harria said, grinning and looking back down at Adiva's face, partially obscured. “I am going to spoil you absolutely rotten. You will be a princess and the baddest motherfucker that ever trod the face of this sad little planet.”

“Is that what you think of yourself?”

“That's right,” Harria said, meeting Liara's gaze. “That's exactly what I think.”

Liara looked so tired. Harria took a hand off Adiva again, and the flutter of frustration was much less than the first time. Adiva was going to sleep. She offered her hand to Liara, and Liara pulled herself out of the cloudy water and took a towel.

Wrapped in it, she looked far more vulnerable than she had looked naked. For the first time, Harria thought she looked young.

Adiva saw her through Harria's eyes, and _she_ thought Liara looked exceedingly warm and comfortable. Deep and endless need for that warmth wracked her tiny body, and she twisted in Harria's arms and squawked. Harria bounced Adiva, rubbing her back. “Hey, I think probably you are the sweetest little lovely.”

Adiva turned her face up to Harria's and the meld slapped Harria hard. She saw her own face through Adiva's eyes. Adiva did not really notice the sores. She knew her face. _Shepard. Father._

 _Go to sleep, little one,_ she thought. _The world will be here when you wake up._

Adiva twisted one more time and then relaxed. _We will be right here,_ she told her. _You've done enough today already._

When Harria looked up, Liara was watching them. Harria offered Adiva to her silently, and Liara mouthed, _Sleeping?_

Harria shrugged. Maybe. It felt like the meld was gone, but who knew?

Liara led her out of the bathroom, to the crib that was pushed against the bed, and Harria gently placed Adiva into it. She stirred but did not open her eyes. It was the first time that they put her into the crib, but it was time - they were all ready to sleep. Harria pulled a baby blanket over her.

She turned to Liara, and Liara leaned into her, like she had in the elevator a lifetime ago. This time her body sagged.

Harria guided her around the crib to the bed and Liara nestled into her shoulder, relaxing. Harria kissed her forehead and stroked the crests on her head. She knew the endless need for Liara that Adiva had expressed. Her heart overflowed from it. Liara's breath tickled her skin, and Harria tried to drown in it.

The last time Liara had fallen asleep, when she woke up she rejected Harria. Harria knew in her heart that it would happen again. Adiva was born. Harria had done everything she could, and in the end yielded herself to Shepard. Now Harria was back, and Liara did not need Harria. She slept now in Shepard's arms, but when she woke she would remember that Shepard was dead.

Liara stirred and slipped one arm around Harria's back, pulling her closer. Harria breathed out slowly, holding back the sob that threatened to loose itself in her throat.

“Thank you,” Liara whispered.

For what? Holding her? Getting Adiva to sleep? Being there at all? Harria did not know what to say.

“Anytime,” she said, feeling stupid. “How are you doing?”

“Tired,” Liara told her, but she seemed more awake now. “Hurting.” Her palpus moved slightly between them, against Harria's leg. It hurt Liara to keep it inside - that part of her body was battered and bruised, and the extra space that releasing her palpus gave her put less pressure on the rest of her - but it was uncomfortable outside, too. Cold and unsheathed, it became dry quickly. It wasn't meant to be outside her body for very long.

Harria opened her legs without thinking, and Liara pushed up in the bed to look her in the eye. “It is not sex,” she said.

Harria nodded. “I get it,” she said. “I know.”

“Are you sure you will not want to escalate?” Liara asked her.

Harria shrugged. “I just - isn't this what happens? Afterward? With um, asari?”

Liara's lip twisted. “You heard that.” It was actually a curse in their culture. _Your mother keeping wet in your father, you purebood._ Now that Liara was in the situation it seemed right to her. Or it had while they'd been wrapped in the meld before.

“Yeah.”

“You are not asari.”

“That's true,” Harria said. Liara kissed her softly, and her palpus slipped between her folds. She did not press on Harria's walls or her entrance, but the angle meant that as her palpus slipped inside, it slid along Harria's clit.

Harria's breath became shallow as Liara continued to slide inside, and the pressure grew. She was winding the end of her palpus so it would all fit, Harria realized. The image of Liara inside, the end of her wound into a ball - Harria closed her eyes and her hips rocked back, rubbing her clit on Liara.

“OK,” Liara breathed.

“OK,” Harria returned. “Is that better?”

“Much,” Liara said. Harria opened her eyes and Liara was smiling slightly. “Thank you.”

“I'm just going to, um, relax,” Harria said. “A little bit.”

“You taste amazing,” Liara said softly.

Harria could feel her body trying to grasp Liara tighter. She imagined just rocking her hips a little bit - just enough that she could feel Liara against her clit - the pressure inside was too intense. Liara wouldn't need to do anything else. She could stay exactly like that, and Harria would just rock a little bit into her.

She held her breath until she had to breathe, and then gasped.

“This is so good,” Liara said. Her face was serene.

“Yeah.” Harria focused on her face. She remembered Liara's exhaustion and her pain, and kissed her forehead. “Please sleep.”

Liara didn't respond. After a few long moments, the tension in Harria eased. She watched Liara's face and focused on the connection between their selves, their bodies. It was impossible to imagine losing this. They were too close to part.

She woke up in a panicked blur. Everything was open around her. It was not a sleeping pod. It wasn't the Cerberus chopping-block, which was always tight around her body, like Grunt’s breeding tube. She tossed her arm out to protect herself, and her arm hit something midair and bounced back. She thrashed.

Liara woke with her, and their bodies parted. Liara's hand came up to Harria's face to block Harria's sight of the room. “Look at me, look at me,” she said. This time when Harria's arm lashed out it was able to pass through the open air without obstruction. Liara was unwinding herself from inside Harria.

Harria gasped for air. She grabbed Liara’s arm and looked at her. Liara said, “Everything is fine. Nothing is here but us.”

Harria nodded. Her panic faded. The last of Liara eased out of her, leaving wetness and a sense of emptiness. “Shit,” she said. “Sorry.”

“I forgot,” Liara told her. “The barrier was too close to us.”

That was what Harria's arm had hit the first time. “Yeh - yeah, jeez,” she said. “That was really - “ Liara forgot? “What do you mean, you forgot?”

Liara frowned, breaking their eye contact. “Never mind.”

Harria's sweat was cooling rapidly. “Shepard didn't wake up like that, did she?” But Shepard had not been born in a lab tube like Harria.

Her voice woke up Adiva, who fussed in the cradle. Liara turned immediately to her, and by the time she had her arms over the edge of the cradle Adiva was already on her hands and knees.

Harria set aside the question and followed Liara. Even if it was true… what would that mean? Maybe she'd snapped out in sleep? If her sleeping self was Shepard - who was Harria? She felt the familiar sense of being someone else. This time it was her who invaded the body and expelled its rightful occupant.

* * *

Harria sat at the computer and squirmed. She slid down in the seat, squinting at the screen. Then she sat up straight and put her hands under her chin.

“What are you doing on there?” Liara's voice was laughing behind her. Adiva must be sleeping again. Harria had spent the past few hours with them and then given Liara space. It was unclear whether that was appreciated, but the last thing Harria wanted to do was become a nuisance.

She put her hand behind Harria's neck and rubbed. “Is this a report?”

“Yeah, I,” Harria muttered. _Mission Number 12. Informal Name. Accomplishments._

Liara read out loud from the form. “What did you gain or learn during this mission? Did you make contact with anyone new? How did this mission further your ultimate goal?”

Harria watched her retrieve a chair and bring it over to the computer. “Let’s see,” Liara said. Her hand rested on Harria's knee, and the touch inexplicably sent a twinge up her leg to her clit.

A distraction from Harria's problem. She turned with determination to the computer. “This is a unique circle of hell Cerberus designed just for me.” Lawson had already sent two reminders about the missing report. Fucking micromanager. The second one had included a pointed remark about shore leave privileges.

“I know,” Liara said warmly, and Harria caught a real smile. “You made Garrus write all your reports to the Council, and Kaiden to the Alliance.”

“Ghostwriters,” Harria said with excitement. “Why didn't I think of it?”

“You didn't,” Liara said, and it took a second for Harria to understand.

“It was your idea,” she said. “Jeez.” She thought for a minute. “You know, I bet Garrus has been super offended I didn't ask him to do it when he came back on the crew.”

“Probably,” Laura agreed. “Now. You told me you recruited that assassin, Thane Krios, right? 'Recruit’ starts with 'R.’”

Harria scowled and started typing. Her omni-tool beeped insistently, and she glanced at it. Lawson was calling her. She'd marked the call “Urgent.”

She muted it and kept typing. _A valuable ally. Krios will be helpful in assassinations and burglaries. I imagine we will have compatible talents. No more burning down the door. There's always a smarter way to get into a building than the front entrance. Look forward to intel from Cerberus to make this approach more viable._

She sat back, satisfied, and looked at Liara. “Not so bad,” she said.

Liara leaned in and kissed her. Maybe she wouldn't be kicked out. Maybe they'd just live like this forever.

Her omni-tool beeped again. Liara pulled away and looked at it.

This time the call had a title. “SHEPARD I NEED YOUR HELP.”

Harria looked at Liara and then accepted the call. The image on the interface was just big enough that Lawson's breasts were included in the shot. Naturally.

“Hey, your report is finished and I'm about to send it, I promise.” It was just the metadata that hadn't been filled out.

“This isn't about that. Shepard, are you in a secure location?”

“Yep,” Harria said. Liara was watching the call, offscreen. Her apartment was probably secure. Harria doubted Liara would leave the office bugged and not do a full sweep of her home. She had to do her real work somewhere.

“There is no chance of this being overheard? This is really important.”

Harria shrugged and deliberately misinterpreted. “I feel like, maybe someone could hack the line?” It was a Cerberus encryption.

“My - I should start by saying that I have a sister. She is my genetic twin. I helped her escape from my father, and - I have found out that he knows where she is, and plans to take her back to him, by force. I've arranged for her family's transport off-world, to a new, secure location, but it seems that Eclipse mercenaries are aware of their itinerary and my involvement. I've got someone I trust escorting her, and I was hoping to run a parallel line to distract the mercs.”

“Bring Jacob,” Harria suggested, and Liara shook her head. Lawson was asking her for help with her sister. It was clearly not a Cerberus job. If they pulled off the transfer and Harria was able to get her sister's ultimate destination, she would have powerful blackmail. _Fucking Lawson._ “I'll meet you both at the cab terminal on Trading Center level 35c in… thirty?”

“I have a private car. I will pick you up there.”

“Great.”

Lawson hung up, and Harria scowled. “You bullied me into doing that. Lawson is the _worst._ Who cares about her stupid sister.”

“She seems to like you enough,” Liara said softly.

Was she referring to the proposition? “I'm her pet, remember?”

Liara laughed. “Maybe not entirely,” she said.

“I'll try to get the intel on her sister. I should probably run.” She was wearing Liara's clothing. “You don't have underclothes for my suit, do you?”

“Sure,” Liara said. They stood together, and Harria’s omni-tool disconnected with a low beep from Liara's terminal. The screen flickered and blanked. “You will be careful? Don't take any risks.”

Harria grinned. “I won't do any circus tricks, I promise. Acrobatics are so not my thing.”

Liara frowned at her, and then kissed her again, hard. “Why do you say these things? Cerberus couldn't have - you - you didn't remember us, when you woke up. How could you know?”

Harria shrugged. “What did I say?” Liara started crying, and Harria kissed her forehead and put her hand behind her head.

Liara offered the meld, and Harria grasped it. Liara's arms were wrapped around Shepard’s shoulders. Shepard's face was unscarred. They were mostly clothed, but Liara's suit was open and they'd just had sex. _You will be careful this time, and minimize acrobatics?_ And again, a new scene, in a narrow cot, wrapped together, this time Shepard -  _I'm going to do a few backflips. That won't be a problem, right?_ On an alien world that Harria recognized as Ilos, from the pictures Cerberus gave her - Shepard's eyes were flinty -  _Hey, Liara? I'll be back._ And then a smile.  _No acrobatics, I promise._ The irony of it was that she had died because of the same reckless physicality and overconfidence that Liara had asked her to avoid. Harria's words were an inside joke gone very sour.

That wasn't the only thing that Liara had noticed, but she pulled away before Harria could get any more details. The flowers, probably. She hadn't even known.

Harria breathed out. “Alright, it's alright,” she said to Liara. “I don't know. I don't know anything.”

“Are you Shepard?” Liara asked her. Her hands were tight on either side of Harria's hips.

“No idea,” Harria said. “I don't know.” _Definitely not. But she is not entirely gone._

“Damn this,” Liara cursed. “This isn't OK.”

“I'm sorry,” Harria whispered.

“Just remember.”

“I can't.” Harria tried a smile. “I thought I was cuter than her.”

Liara laughed despite her tears and nodded. “You are. Will you say goodbye to Adiva?”

“Yeah,” Harria said. She bounded up the stairs. She would be late to meet Lawson, obviously. _Let her wait._


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for the love, guys.
> 
> Still looking for a beta.
> 
> Here's a nice simple chapter for this weekend.

Niket’s blood had barely cooled on the ground before Harria messaged Liara. _Wrapping up can I come back?_ Liara responded a few moments later with a one-word affirmative. Her promptness reassured Harria. Liara was thinking of her. She was watching for a message from her.

Harria considered returning to the Normandy with Lawson and Jacob - it had been two days, and she badly needed to hit the gym - but it already felt like a lifetime since she’d seen Adiva and Liara. With a modicum of normalcy returned to her, the turn that her life had taken was more shocking. Two weeks ago she'd been uncertain that she'd ever see Liara in person at all. Then she’d finally met Liara and somehow they had come together, despite the odds - almost fallen together, magnetic and unstoppable, or so it'd seemed. She had tried to make it happen, but it wasn't her that'd prevailed, really. It was Liara who'd let everything go, who'd decided to let her in. Whose standard was low enough that Harria had made the cut.

Shepard always felt closer after the fight. Harria had been unsure if Shepard knew that Liara's baby had been born, even though she'd witnessed it directly. Even while present and in control, Shepard always seemed vague, imperfectly conscious. But Shepard snapped in for long periods during the fight, and Harria was able to confirm that she did know. She was joyful, fearless, fierce and indomitable. She could not speak for herself, but her heart soared with incoherent happiness. Harria was glad for Shepard. She was glad that Shepard knew.

When Harria returned, the door opened at her touch. Liara must have recoded it. The apartment was overwarm. Liara was sitting on the ground in the carpeted living area and Adiva crawled beside her in a mess of playthings, plastic blocks and dolls and model starships. They both looked up at her entrance, and Adiva smiled and yowled at her.

“Hello!” Harria went to her knees and Adiva crawled to her. “Oh, don't touch,” Harria said, too late. Her armor was utterly filthy with mech parts, blood, and sweat. The familiar smell of ozone was heavy around her.

Adiva tried to climb onto her lap, and Harria looked up at Liara helplessly.

Liara stood and picked Adiva up with her. Adiva's onesie was now filthy, too. Harria stood with her, and Liara inexplicably leaned into her. She didn't care about the grime, apparently. Their lips met.

“Welcome back,” Liara said to her. Adiva pounded a fist on her breastplate.

Harria wondered if Shepard could feel this through the foggy morass of her self-imposed prison. Could Shepard see Harria here, pretending to be her? Was she jealous, or happy for Harria?

In the end it didn't matter. Shepard couldn't speak. Harria had to speak for her. “I love you both. So much.” Liara looked at her like the words were unexpected. “ _We_ love you,” she clarified, feeling a need to explain, and then changed the subject. “I think Cerberus had some of the bugs in your office. Lawson and Jacob know. They didn't say specifically.”

Liara hummed and nodded. She moved away. “You should clean up.”

“Yep,” Harria agreed. An hour later she was curled with Adiva, playing with a paper-bound storybook in hand. She read the story out loud, and Adiva chirped and ripped the pages from her hands. An hour after that Adiva was asleep, and Liara was wrapped around her instead, in the blissful half-sleep before true rest.

Liara had worked her fingers under Harria's shirt, and she turned Harria on her back and examined her stomach. Harria squirmed self-consciously.

“Does it hurt?” Liara asked her. Her eyes were on the gash in Harria's side. Harria flexed her stomach to close it, although Liara must have seen the bone through the cut before.

“Um, yeah,” Harria told her.

“Cerberus won't heal it? Don't they want Shepard?”

“Dunno.” Harria put her hand under Liara's chin and urged her face up. “I think it would take too long. Don't - don't worry about it, please.”

Liara shook her head and pulled up on the bed, resting on Harria's body, between her legs, and kissed her. Harria’s embarrassment melted with the touch. Liara kissed her like they'd never kissed before. Like this would be their last kiss, and when Liara released her she would fade away. Their lips met again, and Liara let her tongue tease Harria’s lips. Harria returned the gesture, softly.

Her body relaxed into a satisfied bliss. When Liara pulled away the last time, she found that her leg was up around Liara's hip, half-embracing, half-inviting. She sighed, not stilling her hands, which had roamed innocently on Liara's back and her neck.

Then Harria felt Liara's warm tongue on her nipple. She breathed out. Her body’s bliss turned into liquid electricity in her veins. She wondered if she should ask Liara to stop, but it felt too good to stop. She imagined wrapping her legs around Liara and pulling her into her body. She couldn't imagine wanting anything more than this soft touch, but she did - she wanted Liara so badly. _More,_ she thought, and then Liara pressed her palm against her hip, and she pushed up into the touch. She ached. The need coiled in her belly and centered inside her, almost painful, the bite of lust.

“What do you want?” Liara asked her.

Harria laughed, a slight exhalation. “Yeah,” Harria said. “I want.”

“You want me?” Liara's tone was innocent, but her hand had wrapped around Harria and she squeezed her ass, with her hand nearly all the way around her, between her legs. The area was more sensitive than Harria had ever imagined.

Harria moaned. She was pinned and helpless. “What - what are you going to do?” she managed. “Please.”

“You're going to stay still,” Liara murmured.

“Yeah,” Harria agreed.

“And I am going to see what I can do to satisfy you.”

“OK,” Harria said. “Whatever you want.”

“This is what I want,” Liara told her, and she pulled down Harria's borrowed pants and discarded them. Harria hated the distance between their bodies, and Liara didn't restore their connection. Instead she slid down in the bed and pushed up Harria's other leg, trailing her hands along the insides of her thighs to their apex. She separated Harria's outer labia and looked at her, and Harria was uncertain.

She wet her lips and almost asked Liara to come back and kiss her again, but Liara chose that moment to kiss her wetness. “OK,” Harria breathed, and put her arm over her eyes. This was Liara. She trusted her.

Liara explored her, and Harria felt herself pulsing into the touch. It felt good, she decided. It was unlike Liara's palpus inside her. It lacked the command of her deep strokes. But it was still Liara, softly pleasuring her.

Liara's tongue teased her entrance, and her breath hitched. Then she moved directly to her clit, and the pleasure focused acutely. “Yes,” Harria told her. “Keep - right there -” Then Liara moved back to her entrance, and Harria moaned in frustration.

Liara shifted between her legs, and Harria took her arm off her face to see her hand settling on Harria's thigh, almost touching her hair. “OK,” Harria said again.

“Do you want me inside?” Liara asked her. She was talking about her fingers, Harria guessed.

“Yeah,” Harria said. “And lick - my clit, please.”

“Is that what you wanted?” Liara said teasingly.

“You are torturing me,” Harria complained.

“I’ve waited so long to have you again,” Liara said. The affection in her voice turned hard. “And I'm going to have you for as long as I want.”

Harria moaned. “Have me, please.”

Liara kissed her hair and moved her hand down. She barely dipped the tips of her fingers, a slight pressure at Harria's entrance. And then her tongue found Harria's clit, and Harria's body stilled in a white blur of satisfaction and need. “Oh, yes. Yes, _please_.” She didn't know what she was begging for.

And then Liara's fingers inched into her entrance. Harria was tight around them. How many fingers was Liara using? Harria imagined that Liara was trying to put all four of her fingers in her. It was too big to fit. Harria’s hips raised to make her angle easier, and Liara slipped in another tight inch.

Liara pulled her face away and looked at Harria, her hips hovering a few inches from the bed. “I don't think I will fit,” Liara told her.

“Oh, please,” Harria said. “Just a little deeper.” Liara pulled out a little, watching her hand.

“You look so wet and ready for me,” Liara told her. “But you're too tight to take it.”

“Stretch me,” Harria said. “I can take it. Fuck.”

Liara thrust her hand in, smoothly, hooking her fingers into Harria’s front wall for the first time, and Harria collapsed into the bed. “You need me to fuck you.”

“Yeah,” Harria gasped. “Yeah, please.” She put her arm over her eyes. She was rippling and grasping Liara's fingers, but her body was so tight around Liara that her muscles didn't have purchase.

“Are you going to come for me?” Liara stroked her again.

“Yeah.” She was close, peaking already, but the acute pleasure was not quite close enough to grasp. Was this a different kind of orgasm?

Then Liara's lips closed around her clit and the end of her orgasm was white and golden, so much better than Harria had ever imagined was possible. Her body strained and then released, over and over.

The bliss tapered off slowly, and then Liara pulled her fingers out and slid up in the bed. Harria kissed her, tasting herself on Liara's lips. “I can't breathe,” she said, and her body contracted again, this time empty. Her hips dipped, looking for Liara’s fingers, and she wrapped her body around Liara's.

Liara put her fingers back between her legs, pressing against her clit, and Harria moaned. “Just stay there.”

“I've got you,” Liara told her.

“Liara, is it always so good?”

Liara smiled devilishly. “You'll have to find out.”

“It can't be,” Harria said. “How would anybody get anything done?”

Liara kissed her. “The second time you've ever had sex,” she said. “

“Yeah. You've got my virginity. How does it feel?”

“So good.” Liara's finger moved downward, along the length of her slit. “I love having you in my bed. You are so pliable, Harria. So ready. You'll do whatever I want, won't you?”

“Yeah. You're only going to do good things to me.”

Liara's smile faded, and Harria remembered what Liara had shown her. Their first time. Liara had stripped out Shepard, overcome her. She had taken something not offered.

“I'm only going to like what you do to me. I love everything you do,” Harria said, trying to salvage the situation.

Liara nodded and looked at Advia, sleeping in her cradle. Adiva was facing away, her breath falling in slight puffs. Harria wondered what her conception had been like. Had they had sex? Did Shepard just tell Liara to do the mating meld, damn the pain and fear? Had it only been for Liara's sake that she had accepted the meld, or had she wanted to share her self with Liara in that moment?

Harria was unafraid of the meld. Her gut had told her to dodge it, but while Liara's mind caressed hers, she had never been hurt by it. Maybe the mating meld was different.

Harria would probably never feel the mating meld. Liara wanted her close, but probably not that close. And what if they conceived? Shepard and Liara had conceived during their first time, and even the echo of that memory was physically painful. Liara wanted that baby, too. Once the baby was conceived, losing it was painful. No. Harria would never feel the mating meld with Liara, and she was the one who wanted it.

Liara finally looked back at Harria. What had she been thinking about? “I will protect you,” she said unexpectedly. “You are safe here.”

“I know,” Harria said. She smiled and kissed Liara. “I never doubted it for a second.”

* * *

Garrus was in the gym when Harria finally made it there. As she loaded weights, she told him, “We are lifting off at 1200 hours. You ready to go?” She'd told EDI to tell the whole crew, so he probably already knew.

“ _Am_ I,” Garrus said when he finished his set. “Two weeks on Illium is quite long enough for me. I have been meaning to talk to you, Shepard.”

“Oh?” she said, and then started squats.

“You used to warm up,” Garrus observed.

Harria finished the set. “Cerberus has me on five different performance enhancing drugs. They laced my muscles with a secondary electrical system that activates each of my muscles every hour or two. Just imagine that I'm on cocaine. Always on.”

“Huh.”

“I'm just here for the relaxation,” she concluded, and then her lip twisted. She shook her head. “You wanted to talk?”

“Do you remember Sidonis?”

“The guy who betrayed you? Yeah.”

“I have received a message that indicates a man called Fade may have helped him to disappear.”

“Where is he?”

“The Citadel.”

Harria shook her head. They'd just been to the Citadel. If Sidonis thought he was safe, he’d keep. “That’s great,” she told him. “I promise that I will do everything in my power to maneuver him into your sights, Garrus.”

Garrus relaxed. “Thank you. Your help in this would be invaluable, Shepard.”

“Yep,” she said.

“And how are you?” Apparently he planned to just watch her. She unloaded one hundred pounds and moved the bar to the bench press station.

“Uh, where do I begin?”

“Liara agreed to tea,” Garrus reminded her. “And you saw her. Then you just stopped talking about it.”

 _To you,_ Harria thought. “Yeah,” she said to him. “Right. You knew she was having Shepard's baby.”

A small slip, but Garrus didn't seem to notice. He looked down.

“It's fine, I don't want to have a huge sob fest over it or hear about your feelings or anything. I was a little annoyed, but I'm over it.”

Garrus looked up, and Harria started her benching set. “I thought you would have known. If you didn't know, I worried it might be someone else's. She was the one best suited to tell you.”

“Right,” Harria said, and sat up on the bench. “No, I get it. She's had the baby. Want to see?”

“Absolutely,” Garrus said. Harria'd expected that her child would look less endearing with another person looking at the photos, but she found herself grinning and laughing at the photos anyway. These would be all she had, until they returned to Illium. She could project the photos into her eye implants and simulate three-dimensional space, but that was as close as she would get to Liara and Adiva.

She'd almost habituated herself to the idea when, a few days later, exiting FTL in the Tuchanka system, she received a video call from Liara. She immediately feared the worst, but Liara just wanted to talk. She included Adiva briefly, but Adiva had little interest in the flickering image. They said goodbye with the promise of another call. Harria counted down the hours and queued up another flower to send to her. A daisy, she decided. Today was a daisy day.

* * *

Apparently there weren't any bars in the Urdnot clan’s neutral zone, which Harria didn't believe until she sent Grunt by himself to investigate. There was bootleg liquor, though, and a collapsed building that served as a warehouse. Harria did not want to go back to the Normandy yet, and Garrus seemed game enough, so they all crouched over a makeshift table in the warehouse on the permission of the Urdnot clan leader.

“I've only had ryncol twice,” Garrus said. “Each time I did not remember anything between my first drink and waking up in a gutter.”

Grunt grasped the small jug eagerly. “I will be glad to have real, krogan booze. The human type was sticky and burned.”

Harria bit back a snort. “It _burned?_ ”

Garrus looked back and forth between them and then shook his head. “I do not want to know.”

“Brothers,” Harria began, splashing a half-shot into each of their borrowed mugs. “We celebrate this auspicious day. Wrex is now a - man.” She snorted again, already giddy. “He's got three ladies looking for a hard boning, and tomorrow he will probably have about three thousand offspring more than he does now.”

They all held out their glasses and drank at the same time.

Garrus said, “I think you misunderstand the krogan reproductive process.”

They both looked eagerly back at him, and he groaned, burying his face in his hand. Finally he seemed to steel himself. “Shepard thinks that you will have intercourse,” he told Grunt.

“I won't?” Grunt seemed slightly disappointed.

“Why would you? Your mate will lay the eggs, and you will simply fertilize them. There is no contact between your bodies.”

“But…” Grunt pondered this turn of events. “I would like a woman to fight for, to protect. I would like to - fight for her.”

“This was it. This was your fight.”

Grunt rumbled and poured himself another shot. They both looked at Shepard, who was on her ass on the ground, drooling.

Garrus pushed his mug forward, and Grunt poured another half-shot into it. “To ladies,” Garrus declared. “She doesn't have anything to worry about. _You_ never did. Now, where am I going to find a supple, strong woman to hold at night?”

Grunt almost smiled. “We will find you your proving-fight, and we will stand steady at your back and acquire many breeding contracts on your behalf.”

“A generous offer,” Garrus said. “Thank you for your companionship, Grunt.”

Grunt splashed one more shot into his glass. “Okeer tried to train me to hate you turians, but you are the first friend I have made.”

“Surprisingly profound,” Garrus acknowledged, tilting his head. “What did Okeer tell you about the genophage?”

“That we were dying.”

“See? His words were only fairy tales, for children. You will have many offspring. She only has the one.”

Grunt made another sound deep in his throat and looked at Shepard's drooling body. “Perhaps,” he said. “I have never been concerned.” His brow crinkled as he considered the possibility that he _should_ be. “I will ask her when she wakes.”

When he looked back at Garrus, the turian had joined Shepard on the floor. He considered the jug, and then he stowed it and flung their bodies over each shoulder, feeling an overwhelming sense of camaraderie.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ok guys. Hopefully this is worth the wait. I had to play through everything to get an idea of the right ordering for events, and I've written far ahead of this chapter now... Shit is about to get real.
> 
> Take note: I added the important warning of “Major Character Death" to this fic.

  
“Hey!” Harria greeted Liara’s holograph eagerly. She was walking down the corridor toward the mess hall, and paused there. “Guess who we just picked up?”

“Who?” Liara answered. Her eyes flickered up, beyond the screen. She was walking, too.

“Tali!” Harria told her.

“Oh,” Liara said. “I haven't heard from her since she went to Haestrom.”

“We just left Haestrom,” Harria confirmed.

Liara stopped walking and looked at Harria. “You went that deep into geth space and didn't bother to mention it to me?”

Harria turned back around and headed for the lift. Maybe a conversation for a more private setting. She couldn't tell Liara that this mission was no less dangerous than the last, right? “The Normandy's stealth system worked perfectly. You've got to talk to Tali - her whole unit was decimated. I dunno what they would have done -”

“I will.” Liara softened. “Thank you for helping her, Harria."

“Cerberus gave me the intel. Dunno why, but I guess they know if Tali died and they didn't mention anything to me I'd be pissed.”

“It is good that you have such an ally with you.”

“I know. Nobody else cares about Cerberus and how fucking shady they are. But Tali tells it like it is.”

“Have you spoken with the Illusive Man?”

“Not since Horizon.”

“And you're still determined to go through the Omega 4 relay?”

Harria paused for a long moment. She never had decided that - at all. Liara's tone implied that she had spoken definitively, but she hadn't affirmed that she would go along with the Illusive Man's plan. Although he would be assuming she would - otherwise, why recruit all the crew members that Cerberus had suggested? It was true that Harria was outwardly cooperative. She did want to stop the Collectors. But to dive straight through a relay that nobody had returned from, with no more information than they had...

What would Shepard do? She would follow orders and keep her head up. She'd make sure she had people she trusted at her back, like Tali. And she'd drag her feet until she had enough information to make a call.

In all, Harria hadn't really caught up with the Omega 4 situation. She was just following the roadmap that her puppeteers had put in front of her face. Or, you could say, she was keeping her head up and collecting people she trusted to watch her back. That was definitely it.

What was Liara's angle? If Harria said _yes_ , would Liara understand it to mean _not at all?_ Or had Harria decided to do it, in the past month and a half, without realizing it? Had Liara picked up on something that Harria had not been fully aware of, herself? Was this a secret code, or a real conversation?

“I am,” she answered. “It's the only way to be sure to stop them.”

“What does Tali think?”

“She's, uh - well, she doesn't trust Cerberus…” Harria thought hard. “Maybe we should talk together about our options.”

“If you can't fight just one Collector ship, how can you hope to show up at their doorstep and survive?”

Harria shrugged. “I think Cerberus plans for us to attack as a strike team in their main base.” Again, oddly, she avoided Liara’s question.

“Please, think hard about this, Harria.”

“I’m thinking,” Harria said, already knowing that she wouldn't broach the subject with Tali. “I'm a pretty big investment for Cerberus. They wouldn't just throw me into a fire.”

“You're a bigger investment to me,” Liara said. “Don't be stupid.”

Harria scowled at Liara and collapsed on her own couch. “Shepard's your investment, and she is checked the fuck out.”

“You are Shepard,” Liara told her. The same words that Grunt had said, what felt like a lifetime ago. They hit Harria harder from Liara.

She felt a flare of anger. “Sorry to break it to you, but just because you want her, doesn't mean she's available. You're stuck with me, and we are not the same.”

“Maybe,” Liara whispered. “Harria, will you come back to Illium? Bring Tali. We need to talk.”

Harria blinked away stinging tears. They hadn't talked about when she'd return to Illium. Harria had not asked, and Liara had not offered. But the invitation, which on any other day would have sent Harria's heart soaring, today felt like another jab. “You want your precious fucking Shepard. Fine. I'll deliver her special to you. Whatever the hell you want.”

She cut off the connection and lay with her face against the side of the couch, wondering whether Liara would ever forgive her for what she'd just said, and unsure if she wanted her to.

* * *

Mordin hummed in his nasal way as the scan completed. He spun to the computer, and Harria sat up, dangling her legs from the cot. “All right. Do you have everything you need?”

Without looking back at her, Mordin said, “You have full feeling in all extremities?”

Harria pressed her fingers against the metal of the cot. It was cold. “Yep,” she said.

Mordin shook his head. “Bionic. Nearly entirely. Your bones have been fully replaced. Unclear why. Many circuitry boards that are impossible to diagnose without connecting to. But no interface.” He spun back around and gave her a once-over. “No interface, correct?”

“Dunno. Where would it be?”

Mordin shook his head. “Spinal cord. Base of neck.”

Harria stood, turned around, and took off her shirt. “I haven't really looked.”

Mordin’s long fingers probed her skin. “Nothing. Impossible to interface. Very odd.”

She put back on her shirt.

“Your reproductive system performs normally?”

Harria shook her head. “Not - I don't menstruate.”

“They included the full system. Although you are missing several human organs. Primarily the liver.”

“Why?”

“Judging from blood test, human liver would fail immediately. Synthetic blood designed to carry drug cocktail. The replacement system cleans your blood of toxins, allowing the drugs to remain, mostly. You visit Dr. Chakwas weekly. She injects your blood to keep fresh.”

“I never asked.” Harria rolled her neck. “Am I dependent upon their blood?”

Moradin hummed. “Likely possible to find elsewhere. Not so different from human blood. Used medically.”

“Sometimes she also injects into -” Harria lifted her shirt and showed him a small hole, bloodless but open, like much of her skin. “Here, see? There are a few others.”

“The drugs. They installed a system to disburse slowly.”

“Would I die without them?”

“Impossible to modify the programming without an interface. All or nothing. Risky.”

“All right. Thanks, Mordin.”

“Anytime.” Mordin turned back to the computer. “Will continue to examine. Much data missing. The system is unique. No analogue.”

Harria grinned cockily. “Thanks.”

* * *

Liara and Adiva were waiting for them at the airlock. Liara's eyes met Harria's first, and then flickered to Tali.

“Oh my,” Tali said. She fluttered to them.

“Adiva, this is Tali,” Liara said warmly. Adiva's eyes blackened, and Liara's followed, quicker than a flash of lightning. Then they were back. Adiva twisted her face away, shy. “It is so good to see you,” Liara told her.

“And you as well,” Tali said. “And the little one.”

“She's shy,” Liara explained. “She will warm up right away, and then you'll never be rid of her.”

Finally she looked back at Harria, and Harria stepped forward. “Hey,” she managed.

Adiva turned in Liara's arms at the sound of her voice, and before Harria knew what was happening her arms were around them. Liara embraced her, too, and Harria's lips brushed her cheek. She closed her eyes as her blood turned to syrup in her veins.

Adiva twisted fully in Liara's arms and grasped Harria's shoulders with her tiny arms. “Hello, my dove,” she said to her. “You remember me?” Her breath caught in a slight, tearless sob.

Advia’s meld was barely a brush. _Gone forever and Mom said you would come back but always waiting never come._

 _I'm here now,_ Harria said. Liara never told her that Adiva asked for her. Adiva had been so disinterested in their holo calls.

 _Bad!_ Adiva scolded. _Hurting!_

Harria fell deeper into the meld, into Adiva’s anger. She tried to absorb it all, and replace it with love. _Missing means you love me,_ she said to Adiva. It was her most immediate thought, and she didn't keep it away from Adiva. _I love you, too, and I’m here now._ Her heart could burst.

Adiva released her, satisfied, and Harria found that Adiva was in her arms, and Liara and Tali were talking to each other. Liara must have transferred her during the meld, although Harria had thought she wasn't too deep. Adiva's meld was stronger than it had been in the week after her birth. More impressive, she was thinking in words, almost sentences.

She wiped her cheeks of the tears that had been yanked out of her. “You are so big! Liara told me you were big but I never believed it.”

Adiva's brow crinkled and she chirped, distinctly, “Shep!”

“That's me, sweetheart,” she told her, although a spike of ice entered her heart. Of course Adiva knew her as Shepard. Her father. “Look, I haven't changed a bit, and you are twice as big at least!”

Adiva fussed a little and lay her head against Harria's shoulder, looking at Liara. Liara noticed. “Come on, we should go to my flat,” she told them.

* * *

Adiva was busy at a children's terminal in Liara's apartment. The interface was the same as an omni-tool, but miniaturized for a child's fingers. The games were simple and engaging, training for the real world. They taught her common symbology - not text, but gradually the VI would begin to integrate text symbology into the stories and games, a far less painful way to learn to read than Harria had endured.

Liara and Tali were cross-examining Harria at the dining table. “How much do you really know about Cerberus's intentions? What about that AI? The Normandy is different, insanely powerful - but there are brakes and controls on it, controls I don't understand. How do you know that the nuclear warhead will endure the journey through Omega 4? They are terrorists, Harria. Why didn't you leave immediately?”

Harria tried to tell them about Joker and the ship’s doctor. Everyone was friendly, normal. The Normandy was home. Didn't Cerberus tell Harria about Tali? They let Harria roam freely.

“But what does it matter? Simply because you can direct your own path does not mean you are free.”

Harria stood and put her hands on the back of her chair. “When was I ever free, Liara?”

Adiva shrieked, and they all looked over at her. She was laughing. Faint echoes of the audio interface were audible.

Harria turned back. “I am bound by responsibility.”

“You're not responsible for the fate of the entire galaxy, Harria. The Reapers will come back. We need you when they do. Not now.”

“The Collectors - are the Reapers’. This is the second wave. If we can stem them here, it will make our chances much better when the Reapers come again.”

Tali said, “But to go through Omega 4 is suicide.”

“We don't know that. The Collectors navigate it. We will gather more information. When we have enough to move, we will move. It's true that we don't know enough yet. But we will.”

“You and Cerberus.” Liara looked away.

“Why do you hate them so much?”

Liara looked at Tali, and then at Adiva. Then she typed into her omni-tool. “This is what I intercepted, about four months before I got the first message from you, Harria.”

It was audio only. A report. “The subject remains unresponsive. Brain activity is normal. Reprogramming is the only alternative. I'm requesting permission to begin.” Lawson's voice.

A man answered. The Illusive Man. “Do you really think you have enough material to remake her personality?”

“I think it is the only chance we have. Shepard's mind was too badly damaged.”

“Then do it.”

The audio cut off. Harria sat back down and buried her face in her hands. No wonder Liara had rebuffed her so strongly when they first talked. _Cerberus's pet._

Tali spoke first. “That doesn't make any sense. Shepard is - you are the same, except for the scars.”

Harria kept her face covered, and Liara didn't respond.

“Does it?” Tali sounded very concerned. “Does it make sense?”

Liara finally said something. “There is a human condition - a disease of the mind. The person thinks that they are two people. Harria, Shepard _is_ there. You know it.”

“You want me to disappear,” Harria said into her hands. She was nauseous.

“No - you don't understand. It is possible for you to… they call it re-integration. Rather than splitting yourself, you would be both yourself and Shepard, all the time.”

Harria shook her head. “You think you want that, but you don't.” She put her hands down flat on the metal table. It was comfortingly chill, soothing against her burning skin. She looked at Liara. Liara was hopeful. Harria was drained and empty.

“Don't you want that?” Liara asked.

“No.” Harria pushed her hands against the table. She reconsidered. “Maybe I do, but she doesn't. You have to understand. Why I'm here.”

“Why, Harria?” Liara’s eyes swam in tears. “Why are you here?”

Harria stood. “It doesn't matter. She's not going to help. That's all.”

Tali looked between them, and stood, too. “Maybe I should - go?”

“Please, stay,” Liara said.

Harria smiled humorlessly. “Then it's me that should go. I will be at the Normandy. Text me.”

* * *

Harria spent three hours brooding. Then she took Grunt and Garrus to her favorite dive in Illium and got roaringly drunk. She told them about the old Normandy's crash site, which the Alliance had asked them to visit. Garrus had been on the Normandy when the Collectors attacked it two years ago. So had Tali, and Kaiden, and Joker and Dr. Chakwas.

Garrus told Harria that Liara had never returned to the Normandy after her death. She had been on Ilos with the Alliance trooper when it happened. Tali had called her and told her that her mother and lover had died. When she got off the phone, Tali had just shook her head. She'd gone to retrieve her in a different Alliance ship, and when Kaiden and Garrus offered to accompany her, she'd told them that Liara needed space from what had happened. The next time Garrus had seen her, she was already established on Illium.

“She said she saw my body,” Harria told Garrus. “How could she have?”

“I don't know. We all needed to have something to focus on. The Alliance assigned Kaiden command of the Normandy, and he petitioned to allow the non-Alliance crew to stay. They allowed it, so we just flew around looking for geth to kill. It was only a few months later that the Collectors destroyed the Normandy. But I don't know what Liara did afterward. She may have returned to the Citadel.”

“I was thinking I… might bring Liara with me. To the old Normandy.”

“Why?” Garrus didn't understand.

She opened her mouth to tell him that she barely remembered the Normandy, and then closed it. Enough that Tali and Grunt knew.

“To help her remember,” Grunt said. “Shepard can't remember what happened before she died. Liara bonds with her and helps her remember.”

Harria brought up her beer quickly and drained it, watching for Garrus's reaction. Garrus just looked at her. “Would Liara join your crew?”

“No, I don't think - but she might come for a week, maybe. Long enough to go to the crash site.” Harria was relieved. Garrus would not cause a scene. He wouldn't say that he knew, or that he was surprised. Any reaction would be an unwelcome one. No reaction was great. Perfect.

Liara and Adiva would stay with her in the Captain's cabin. Liara would bring Adiva's bassinet. Harria would sleep in Liara's arms at night, wrapped in her scent. For the small price of trying to remember. _Trying to get Shepard out of her stasis. Being Liara's ally in bringing her back._

Another beer had appeared as if by magic between her hands. Harria brought it to her lips. After this, she'd go to Liara's and tell her the idea. Harria could try to jostle Shepard into wakefulness. It wouldn't hurt to try.

“I'm gonna go to her apartment,” she told them giddily. “This is great. She's going to love it.”

They both shook their heads at that. “Here,” Garrus said. “Ryncol?” Harria took the shot happily.

* * *

The next morning, Harria showed up at Liara's doorstep, sober and hopeful. Liara let her into the apartment, and Tali played with Adiva while Harria and Liara went upstairs to the bedroom.

It looked the same as it had during the week after Adiva's birth, and in that way it seemed like a place from a dream. Everything was where it was supposed to be.

Liara closed the door behind them, backing against it. She looked exhausted.

Instead of speaking, Harria put her hand on Liara's shoulder. She put her other hand on Liara's stomach, below her breast, and slid it down to her hip.

Liara reacted by arching, gasping, and Harria put her arm around her to draw their bodies close. “I'm going to try,” Harria whispered. “I need your help to remember. We will get Shepard back, but I can't do it alone.”

Liara kissed her and it tasted like sex, heavy around them. Liara was soft and needy under Harria's fingers, and Harria discovered her body and made it her own. Her fingers found their place inside Liara, and it was more than Harria had ever imagined she could feel. When the meld came, Harria embraced it. They fell together.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I need a beta... Someone please help me... In the meantime I will dump words on the internet and hope it all works out...
> 
> https://youtu.be/HlnZ42SICYA

_ They paused here, in the main batteries. The sleeping pods were filled with crew, but all their eyes were closed. Shepard was standing in front of her pod. _

_ “There's not enough room for two,” she said quietly. _

_ Liara reached out and touched her hand. “It's not our only option.” _

The memory faded with the meld, and Harria opened her eyes to the bleak landscape. Liara was standing in the same place as in the memory, her features obscured by the blast helmet.

Harria said through her comm, “You went back to the cabin.”

Liara nodded. “She never slept in the pods again.”

“I wouldn't, either,” Harria told her. They walked back down the catwalk. Liara reached for her hand, and Harria took it. 

They found the Captain’s cabin next. What was left of it. Liara pulled down a segment of the wall, revealing a narrow bunk. 

Harria sat at its edge, and Liara took the seat next to her. 

The angle of the wall meant that they were leaning forward to stay upright. “What memory will you show me here?” Harria asked Liara.

“Is this working at all?” Liara asked her. 

“Will you show me Adiva's conception?”

Liara brushed her with the meld.  _ They were laying together, facing one another. “Meld with me,” Shepard asked her. _

_ “I don't think that's a good idea.” _

_ “We're almost there.” _

_ “Shepard, I don't need this.” _

_ “I do,” Shepard told her.  _

Liara pulled the meld away, and Harria lay down on the ruined cot. Liara followed her, and their helmets rested against each other. “She wasn't scared,” Harria said. 

“She knew she wouldn't come back. Maybe if I hadn't done it -”

Harria felt a rush of motion, the pull of air into the vacuum. It might be a real memory. Shepard had released her hold on the console and jumped.  _ Why. _ Liara didn't know. Shepard was the only one who knew. 

Harria reached for her.  _ Please come out. Liara needs to talk to you. _

Shepard stirred.  _ Liara. _

_ Yes. She's here. And you have a daughter. Wake up. _

Shepard shied away, and Harria pulled her forward.  _ Talk to her. Tell her what you're thinking.  _

“She knew she was leaving me with Adiva,” Liara was saying.

Shepard opened her eyes. “I would never have left you, Liara.”

Liara shook her head. She was hysterical. “She jumped. Kaiden told me. She followed Saren.”

“I was the only one there who could stop him. Please forgive me.”

Liara stopped breathing, and Shepard rubbed her gloved hand in a small circle on her back, through her suit. Her skin burned. Her body was wrong. They had left their fingerprints everywhere. She was a prisoner in this body. There was something very wrong - the chip - programming - Harria. This was Harria's body. She belonged here.

Shepard fought the stifling pain, the burning straitjacket, Cerberus's iron maiden, her body. “I can't stay.”

“Why, Shepard? Stay with me.”

“It's all - wrong - I am trapped -” Shepard fought to control the spiral.  _ I'm sorry. _

“Shepard, I love you. Adiva needs you.”

“She's sorry,” Harria told Liara. 

Liara gripped Harria's shoulder tightly. “You can talk to her?”

“Only - just a little.” Harria had never before pushed Shepard to the front like that. “Usually she isn't there at all.”

“Can she hear me?”

“No.” Harria searched for Shepard. Shepard had rolled her body into a tight ball. Her face was buried in her knees. She was safe. “She is usually there while we fight. But she doesn't talk. Sometimes she tells me what to say.”

“She just did talk.”

Harria tried to smile. “Pretty crazy, right?”

“This isn't a joke. Why did she say she's trapped? You trapped her?”

Harria flinched from the accusation. She didn't know. “I don't think so. She, um, she always says it's too painful. There's something about this body that is wrong to her. Something I don't know about.”

“It's not wrong to you?”

“It's the only body I know, Liara.”

Liara glared at her and pushed to standing. She watched Harria scramble up and fold back up the cot into the wall.

“So… back to the new Normandy?” 

Liara nodded. Somehow Harria doubted she'd have any chance tonight. 

To her surprise, after Adiva was asleep, Liara turned her back to Harria, took her hand, and put it under the waist of her panties. Harria slicked her fingers in her wetness and teased her ridges, and Liara's palpus wrapped around her fingers, playing with her. Harria ended the night with raw burns on her ankles and knees and the feeling that Liara would not stop wanting this body, even if Shepard could not abide it. Maybe things weren't quite as bad as they seemed.

* * *

Advia was chirping in Kelly Chambers’s arms. They had immediately become fast friends. Liara and Harria were eating in the mess, and Kelly carried Adiva away, to the med bay. She and Dr. Chakwas would play with Adiva. It was a good set up. 

Liara covered Harria's hand with hers and smiled. “You know that she's trained as a psychologist.”

“No kidding,” Harria said.

“She probably has a lot of insight -” Liara's next words were cut off by Harria's omni-tool beeping. 

“The Illusive Man calls,” Harria said to her. “Hold that thought.”

“Sure,” Liara said.

* * *

“The Collectors are Protheans,” Harria said. She could hear a collective silence at the other end of the comm line. Her voice echoed in her helmet, but the Collector ship lacked atmosphere to conduct the sound and she could not hear her own voice in Mordin and Grunt’s helmets.

Mordin was the first to break it. “Repurposed by the Reapers. Stripped of their own identities.”

“That isn't exactly right,” EDI broke in. “The Collectors are  _ based  _ on Protheans. Their genetic code is distinct from Prothean DNA.”

Mordin did not argue the point. “I must see the data,” he said instead. 

Harria studied the motionless Collector in the pod. She remembered the lanky, collapsed bodies, statues of what she'd thought were Protheans, in Ilos. Liara knew better. She'd seen the beacons. It wasn't something she shared with Harria. Harria suddenly needed to know what the beacons had contained. Something that had mattered so much to Liara - to them. It was a completely empty space in her memory.

“Liara, does this track with what you know about the Protheans?”

There was a pause, and Liara's voice answered. Liara was in the comm room with the rest of the team. “The last Prothean survivors on Ilos disabled the Keepers, which were slaves of the Reapers. Once gatekeepers, they became what we always thought they had been: mechanics. Although we discovered that secret, the damnable rogue Spectre cover-up has prevented any real movement toward discovering the true secrets of the Citadel.” She sounded encyclopedic. “The last Protheans did believe that the Keepers were remnants from the last galactic extinction. If the Collectors were turned against the Protheans during the last coming of the Reapers, it follows that this is the purpose of the Collectors now.”

“Creepy,” Harria said. She rubbed her forearms briskly and shifted her feet. The soft soil that comprised the ground of the Collectors’ ship shifted accommodatingly under her boots. “Let's make sure they don't get any samples of us, right guys?”

“Right,” Grunt agreed. “Let's move, comrade.” He’d started using that word lately, and Harria didn't have the heart to express the true depths of her irritation with it. The seventeenth time was fourteen times too many.

“Let’s,” Harria said, and stole a glance at Mordin as they moved forward. Truly she'd brought Grunt because his presence made her more comfortable, in what was clearly an extraordinarily dangerous situation. But she'd also had a base interest in how they would interact - the singing salarian and the sweet boy krogan. Harria trusted more scientific minds than herself to determine the best solution to the krogan overpopulation problem, but she did wonder how many krogans Mordin deliberately interacted with. Although she might also be mixing up causality. 

Not that Grunt was a krogan. He was still trying to piece together himself from the fragments Okeer had given him. Harria felt like she had started with nothing but a sense of self, one distinct from Shepard. In that way she and Grunt were entirely different.

They winded a way up and through the Collector ship. At every computer terminal, they plugged in a radio transmitter and receiver for EDI. They ended up in a massive, cavernous chamber. The size of the chamber was nearly half the size of the ship itself, Harria thought. 

And then Mordin pointed out the pods. “A library,” Harria whispered. “EDI, are you getting this?”

“Your helmet feed is projected in the comm room,” EDI confirmed. 

“We should get this on some promos or something,” Harria said. 

“They're not going to stop at colonies,” Mordin said. “There aren't enough human colonists to fill a quarter of these pods. They're going to hit Earth.”

“Not if I have a say in the matter,” Shepard bit out. Something was wrong, something more than the scale of the Collectors’ intentions. She could feel eyes on them.

They reached what seemed to be a cliff face. Below, pods floated in green, viscous fluid. Shepard's hackles raised and she turned. She reached around her back and her hand tightened around the grip of her submachine gun - too late.

Five Collectors were behind them, close enough to embrace. Their arms darted out and impaled each of them with thick syringes.  _ Naturally, _ Harria thought. Shepard could barely feel the rod as it pierced her suit’s atmosphere seal, her skin, and into her gut. And then another - through Shepard's shoulder. The drug was brutally powerful. Shepard was not frozen, but each breath was tight and her skin felt metallic. Was it supposed to hurt? It hurt no more than her sores. Was she supposed to be numb? She could barely feel her own body on the best of days.

The Collectors skittered forward and caught each of them before they fully fell, peeling off each of their helmets. The rest of the air left Shepard's lungs in a rush. And as quickly as the attack had come, they were encased in the pods. Shepard's mouth opened and in rushed the green fluid, filling her collapsed lungs. Her hand reached out and pressed against the membrane of the pod. Her body convulsed. She had no weapon. She was encased, trapped. _ Harria, motherfucker, come back. I need you. _

Harria opened her eyes. Grunt and Mordin were in the pods next to her, completely motionless. Were they faking? It seemed impossible. 

She pushed the fluid out of her lungs. They burned. The fluid leaked into her suit through the syringe holes. The shock of the first assault of the drug was wearing off. Her eyes were clear. She could see the Collectors outside the pod.

It seemed hopeless. Even if Harria was resistant to the drug, there was no atmosphere in the ship. How would she make it back to the shuttle? But she wasn't breathing now, and her mind was not deprived of oxygen.  _ What mind? Maybe I am just a computer. Maybe I'm more like EDI than Grunt. _ Harria pushed the thought away.

Was it just these Collectors who hadn't died when this ship was disabled? She couldn't tell whether it was just them. It seemed like a multitude around her.

She could hear voices in the back of her mind.  _ The visual stream is still running - she's moving - No, can you stop Joker, we can't leave - Suit up, I'm going in - T’Soni has beaten you to the second shuttle - I'm getting a feed on her, hold on - _

Jacob and Lawson's voices. Nobody else's. Shepard shrank away until she was nearly gone completely. She didn't want to know.

_ First things first, _ Harria thought.  _ To break this pod open. _ She tried to remember how they'd put Shepard into it. There was a hole in the back, now covered by the metallic bracing used to mount the pods. Brute force would have to suffice.

She turned around and pushed against the metal. It was too tight to engage her legs. She imagined it was a bench press - one press - at least four hundred pounds of pressure, not a big deal, not for Harria. It wasn't even muscle, at least not all of it. It was just her body, a machine.

The pod shattered and Harria spun in the air. It was a drop to the ground, and she landed on her knee, activating her infiltrator's cloak. It worked.

She sprinted away, dodging their attempts to grab her, and the smattering of gunfire. 

The Collectors that had caught them were not the only Collectors. The floor was crawling with them. She ran toward the portal that they'd entered through, not knowing how she knew where it was. Her overhead was gone - her helmet was gone - green fluid dripped from her nose, gushed from her mouth in a paroxysm of coughing, mixing with vomit. 

Her cloak failed, and she dove into cover, waiting for the tiny unit to recharge. She covered her mouth with her hands, holding her nose, her chest convulsing. Her forearm caught her eye - stripped of skin, the suit ripped like paper. The edges of her skin seeped blood into the circuitry and sinews underlying it. It must have been stripped off when she tore out of the pod.

Again she tried to breathe.  _ No air, _ she reminded herself, but her body was not convinced.  _ You don't need air, Harria Shepard. You are a machine. _ She stared at the circuits that wrapped around her titanium bones and willed her body to still. 

Finally she reactivated the cloak and resumed her sprint. The door back to the shuttle was closed.  _ This fucking ship is live. It was a trap all along. _

Then, by some miracle, the door opened before her. She ran as fast as she could down the twisting corridors. Husks activated, anticipating her route, and she slipped between them like a ghost. Her cloak failed, and she didn't stop running. The doors kept opening before her. The ground shook under her boots, and she imagined the particle beam that had torn apart the first Normandy - not her memory. A tank imprint. Wasn't Joker tight against the ship’s hull, safe for now? Would he really leave her? 

For all they'd known, she was already dead. Except that Jacob and Lawson knew that she was alive. Liara was coming for her. 

The last door opened and Harria skidded around the corner, down the ramp. The shuttle was crawling with husks. She reached for her gun, and her hand closed on air. 

They saw her, and as one they charged. She turned around and ran back up the ramp. Her cloak must be nearly charged. Her hand scrabbled at the activation trigger, but the cloak didn't activate. Her thoughts were moving more slowly now. Maybe she could only go without oxygen for so long.

The door opened for her, and more husks fell through it. They were massed behind it, a solid blanket as far up the corridor as she could see.

As if by her command, the door closed over their bodies, severing some. Harria turned to find the husks behind her suspended in a biotic field, every one of the twenty that had crawled over the shuttle. 

_ Liara. _ She was a goddess. Her body was entirely suffuced by her biotics, and she hovered slightly off the ground. Garrus was behind her, with a blanket. He waved her forward, and she ran to him, collapsing in his arms. He carried her into the shuttle, and Harria stayed conscious long enough to confirm that Liara had climbed in after them. She imagined reaching out and touching Liara's arm, her shoulder. And then the shuttle door closed and Garrus put an oxygen mask on her. The blast of oxygen knocked her out.

* * *

Her body was cold and numb. For the first time in her life, her skin did not hurt. Her lungs were still full, but her coughing reflex was entirely gone. Pain medication, or the Collectors’ drug? A mask over her face forced air into her lungs. Had she stopped breathing? 

She could remember to breathe. Damn them. She opened her eyes and pulled off the mask.

The room was dim. Liara slept in the chair next to the cot. Nobody else was there.

Harria turned her arm over. Dr. Chakwas had wrapped it in a bandage. She coughed experimentally, and immediately began choking. She turned over the side of the cot and her body convulsed. 

Liara woke, and she put a tissue in Harria's hand. The tissue was promptly soaked in green jello. Harria dropped it on the ground and fought for breath, fought to stop coughing. “Fuck,” she grated out. “Fuck me.” Tears mixed with dried sweat and bile.

“I'm sorry,” Liara said, and Harria found her face buried in Liara's stomach, arms around her waist. Liara stroked her stiff hair and sushed.

“You shouldn't have come. There was no fucking way I was alive. I'm not alive,” Harria spat. She tore the bandage off her arm. Her circuitry glowed in the dimness.

Liara looked at her arm for only a brief moment before dropping to her knees. “Harria, you are so terribly important to me. I could not sit there and watch you die.”

“Well, sometimes you fucking need to. You've got to be there for Adiva. You've got to let me go.” Harria turned her body away. 

Liara climbed into the cot and spooned her from behind. “I am so sorry that happened,” she said. 

“We'll just go through Omega 4 and get them,” Harria grated out. “Now there's no choice about it.”

Liara sighed, and Harria could feel the breath against her neck. “I don't know if that's what it means,” she said. “How would you find them?”

Harria stared at the bulkhead. “I have to do something.”

“Will you tell me what happened in the ship? Tali said that EDI was able to take control of the ship, even after it lit back up.”

Harria shook her head, and then said, “Wasn't - there wasn't atmosphere on the ship. Protheans don't breathe? I don't breathe.”

Liara propped herself up to look at Harria's face, but Harria didn't turn to her. “Karin said it was the fluid in your lungs. It was infused with oxygen. Was it -”

“A fucking pod. Yes.” That explanation made more sense. Harria had never thought to try not breathing, but how would her body function without oxygen? She was mostly organic. Right? Harria relaxed her hand, watching the machinery shift and slide inside her arm. “Good thing I didn't cough it all out.”

“Protheans breathed,” Liara said softly. “But perhaps Collectors are augmented. Those I saw through your helmet feed had packs on. The mask wouldn't be over their faces.” Liara's hand made small circles on her stomach. Harria felt herself relaxing a little. Liara was so warm. It was nice to have their bodies together. There was nobody like Liara. Harria wanted to be close enough that their skin was shared. She wanted to burrow into Liara and stay there.

“Meld with me,” Harria asked suddenly. “Please.” She turned in the cot to put her forehead against Liara's, and Liara flinched away from her.

“Harria - your eyes.”

“What?” Harria's heart was leaden. 

“Nothing,” Liara said, and tried to put her hand behind Harria's neck. “Let me show you.”

The request was urgent, and Harria let Liara in. Liara kept her on the surface, and kissed her. She had hidden the depths of her fear for Harria, for what the Collectors had done.  _ I love you, _ Liara told her, and Harria grasped her waist to hold her closer.  _ I can't lose you again. _

Harria absorbed the feeling eagerly. She had wanted to die. She didn't think she deserved to escape - she was just a machine. She'd hated herself. Liara’s love easily overwhelmed that feeling. To Liara, Harria was close to perfect. Nobody deserved life more.

She saw her own face.  _ Open your eyes, my love, _ Liara told her. She did.

There was an angry red core in her pupils, simmering. It glowed like the sores on her face, like the circuitry in her arm. 

_ I'm a monster. _

_ At least you're alive. We will ask Cerberus what happened.  _ Even Liara knew that Cerberus wouldn't do anything about it. They had not cared even about the scars. The bionics marked Harria as theirs. 

And then Liara asked to see what had happened on the Collectors’ ship. Harria took her through the entire harrowing escape. The pod, the doors. She expressed her confusion.  _ What happened? _

The one thing she tried to keep from Liara - she wasn't sure if she succeeded - was the voices. Lawson and Jacob. They had no business in her head. 

_ EDI took control of the ship. Perhaps there was a visual feed component. _

It was a rational explanation.  _ The visual stream is still running - she's moving. _ Had Harria made it up? She wouldn't have had the imagination. Maybe they were talking about EDI's visual stream?

_ What was that? _

_ Nothing. Nothing. _

_ Harria, you have to tell me. I am your only true ally.  _

_ Later. _ Harria needed to process it alone. 

Liara let it lie. Instead of the Collector ship, she brought Harria to a field of yellow flowers. Her mother had landed the car along the side of the meadow. 

They lay in the grass. It was slightly wet, through their clothing. Liara took Harria's hand and ran it through the grass.  _ Something I would like to show Adiva one day. _

_ Where are we?  _

_ Thessia.  _

_ I would like to come. I've never seen grass. _

In the meld, Liara nodded and nestled into Harria's shoulder. Harria put her arm around Liara, and their legs entangled. 

Liara spoke _. Another strange thing. The moment the Collectors appeared, Miranda and Jacob left the room. I did, too, and Garrus. Tali said EDI disappeared and the display stayed on your helmet. They went to the cockpit and Joker was taking off. Jacob pulled a gun on him.  _

The voices had said that, too. Harria pulled away from Liara, and Liara expressed longing and loss.  _ Don't leave. _

Harria returned to her. The field reconstituted itself around them.  _ You gonna keep me like this forever? _

_ Yes, _ Liara said fiercely.  _ I need to keep you.  _

_ Please, _ Harria said. In the meld, Liara's palpus was out. Harria opened her legs to it, and Liara went inside.  _ Closer. _ She kissed Liara and their bodies strained together.  _ Closer. Let me in. _

Liara dove with her deeper.  _ Yes. _

Harria’s body blurred into Liara's. She pushed into Liara's chest.

And then, suddenly, Liara pulled away. Harria howled to lose her. Liara took her hand and they rose, up through the meld, and Liara released her into her body.

They were together on the cot. The lighting was dim. They were alone. 

Their breath was ragged, crashing together. Harria held Liara's head against hers. They were silent for a long time, catching their breath.

Liara finally spoke. “Adiva is all I want, right now, Harria.”

“Me, too,” Harria said. “Thanks for - stopping me.”

Liara nodded and her lips brushed Harria's. “It felt so good. I would have stayed like that.”

“Yeah,” Harria agreed. She'd been the one who escalated. Echoes of that hunger reverberated in her chest. “I didn't really think about it. I just want you.”

“And I want you,” Liara said. “So much.”

Harria's mind returned to the puzzle. She realized something she had kept from Liara in the meld - hadn't really processed yet, at all. The door, once Harria had reached the shuttle and found it overrun. It had opened for her, and when she saw the husks, it closed again. EDI hadn't been using a visual stream from the ship itself. Otherwise, she would never have opened that door. She had been seeing through Harria's eyes.

Cerberus didn't need bug in Liara's office. Harria was herself a spy.  _ I'm getting a feed on her, hold on. _ Lawson and Jacob were her keepers. Her whole life was observed. 

Liara couldn't know. She hated Cerberus. Harria had to get disconnected, pronto, and never tell Liara at all. 

Because she was going to the Collector base, and she needed Cerberus for it. She'd get Grunt and Mordin back, and all the other human colonists. She'd deprive the Reapers of that, at least. And set all those repurposed Prothean husks free. 

She pitied them. She understood what it was to be controlled. Shepard's greatest fear - something that dogged her, and happened to her again and again - something she couldn't fight against and couldn't tolerate - being controlled - that was one thing Harria knew well.

She'd set the Protheans free, and then she'd figure out what was left of her life to come back to.


	14. Chapter 14

_She was running down a narrow corridor, looking for the baby. Her baby - it was Adiva, crying, screaming. She had to find her. Adiva was in danger._

_She turned a corner into a dead end, and turned back around. She was tireless. She would find Adiva. Adiva's voice rose to a shriek, and she lengthened her stride, turning corners too quickly, pushing off the walls with her arms, propelling herself forward._

_Finally she rounded a corner and found her, in someone else's arms. Adiva was quiet, finally. Safe?_

_She approached, and the figure looked up. It had her face. It looked at her without expression. Deep in her doppelganger's eyes, there was a flickering red flame._

* * *

The Illusive Man called her to talk, and Harria ignored him for the day it took to sling themselves back to Illium. They needed to talk, but Liara should not be on the ship when they did. She could not know what Harria planned.

When the Normandy entered orbit, though, Harria got a data package from Cerberus. A peace offering, or what could pass for it. A vid with scrambled location signatures. For Liara.

Harria had asked them for clues on the Shadow Broker, not ever expecting anything to come of it. They watched the vid together, and Liara transformed. “This is the clue I've been waiting for. The Shadow Broker. I can't believe - a location signature! Incredible.“

“Incredible,” Harria echoed. She felt happy for Liara, but only vaguely. Her heart was focused elsewhere. On what would happen when Liara left the ship. They were so close. She was so close to having the truth from the Illusive Man. Her heart burned for it.

Liara practically ran to Harria's terminal, and then she paused. “How long until we dock?”

“Twenty minutes?”

“I will go home.” _To a secure connection._ “Will you meet me there in an hour or two? I - I need to find a babysitter.”

“Kelly?” Harria mumbled. She hadn't spoken to the yeoman since Liara's heavy-handed hint. It seemed hopeless. Shepard had not stirred since their capture. It felt like Harria had left her behind on the Collector ship.

“Oh - good idea. Do you think she would mind coming with you? Adiva wants to be home, now.”

“I bet she'd love it. Same old ship gets dull after a while.”

“Great,” Liara said. She picked Adiva up, and Adiva squacked. “We're going home, sweetheart.”

Adiva's eyes jumped immediately to Harria. “Shep?”

“I told you not to call her that,” Liara scolded. “Da. Say it with me. Da.”

“Da,” Adiva said hesitantly. “Da?”

Harria took her from Liara and kissed both of her cheeks. “I'm not going anywhere,” she lied. What else to do? Maybe it would take a long time on Illium to find someone to remove her transmitter, or whatever it was that enabled Cerberus to stream her visuals. Maybe it wasn't a lie. Who knew?

Adiva gurgled and wrapped her arms around Harria's neck, bouncing a little. Her meld prodded Harria, and Harria gently rejected it. Not now. Her mind was too full.

Adiva fussed and flung herself away from Harria, trusting her arms. Harria caught her, and Liara took her back.

Liara was distracted by something. “Harria, that was - the drell in the video was Feron. An old friend. I had thought he was dead. Now - to discover he is alive -”

Liara was conflicted. Harria paid closer attention. Liara was both joyful and, oddly, the joy was undercut by something, a sobriety that did not match. “What happened?”

“He and I recovered a shipment of slaves from the Shadow Broker. It was for work - although we did not sell them. I did not. Feron - he sacrificed himself to ensure that I was able to transport the slaves to safety. I haven't heard from him - _of_ him - since.”

“You're confident that is him?”

“Absolutely,” Liara said. “It is - complicated.”

Harria raised an eyebrow. “It doesn't sound complicated. It sounds like two birds with one stone.”

Liara looked away, but not before Harria caught a hint of something more in her eye.

“Look, the Normandy's at your disposal. Whenever you need, we will just hit up the spot -”

“The location is fragmented. I know someone who can piece it together, but I don't know how long it will take.”

Harria sat, stretching out her legs. She wasn't lanky, not really, but she sat like she was gangly. Probably because Shepard had been. “Whenever. You're the priority.”

“Thank you, love,” Liara smiled. The emotion didn't enter her eyes. Something very odd was going on.

Harria would let Liara share the secret in her own time. She flipped on her omni-tool and tried to discretely research bionic surgeons on Illium while Liara nursed Adiva. Liara was also busy on her omni-tool.

When they left twenty minutes later, Harria went straight to Lawson's office. “Come on. We're calling Mr. Illusive.”

Lawson trailed her. Her entire body was a huge question mark, but she didn't say anything.

When the image finally resolved, Harria pulled her pistol and shot Lawson's knee. The blood sprayed the Normandy's white plating.

Lawson gasped and fell in a satisfying heap.

“All right, everyone. Let's get real. We all know what's going on.”

Lawson's eyes were on the silhouette of the Illusive Man. He opened his mouth and exhaled in a long stream, and then he said, “What do you want? Our interests are still in alignment, I can assure you.”

“I need this motherfucking - antenna - out of me. I need my schematics.”

The Man laughed dryly. “A common med terminal had enough diagnostic equipment to identify your transmitter. The surgery itself is less trivial. I would urge you to consider an alternative. We will continue to download your data, but you will have absolute control over it. You will be able to delete it - view it - whatever you wish.”

“Bullshit,” Harria spat, and she aimed her pistol at Lawson's other kneecap. “Mordin didn't tell me jack about a fucking transmitter.” Her voice caught in her throat and she fell into a series of wet hacks, uncontrollable. She spat a lob of the green fluid on the ground.

When she finished coughing, the Man said, “You didn't write his checks, did you?”

“Stop talking in the past tense.” Harria considered Lawson's other kneecap. It was so tempting. “Look, I really don't want to do this. I appreciate what you did for me, Lawson, I really do.” She paused. “Oh, not bringing me back. That was a shitty move. But you gave me Liara, and that -” Lawson's perfect forehead crinkled slightly. The only hint of her pain was the beginning of a tear in each eye.

Harria spun to the Illusive Man’s image. “Oh, fuck. You didn't. You didn't fucking give me Liara. All this time, I thought you did. You just gave me plastic and titanium, didn't you? Shepard gave me Liara.”

The Illusive Man watched her patiently.

“What, you're not going to spill on Liara?” Harria felt her chest tighten in frustration. “That transmission she intercepted, which was so obviously staged -”

She spun back to Lawson, but her face was smooth again. The one tear had become two.

Harria used the pistol’s tip to tilt Lawson's head up. “You're not going to fight me? At all?”

Lawson shook her head, looking at the Illusive Man.

“You're going to rely on my sanity? Is that it? Feeling pretty confident in your handiwork?”

“To the contrary,” Lawson said, rolling her eyes slightly. Her cheeks were streaked in tears, now.

Harria laughed, a bark, feral. “That’s right. You wanted Shepard. Here she is, in the flesh, just as bloodthirsty and bitchy as the stories tell. Congratulations. She just wants one more piece of intel from you: What else did you do? What did you put inside me, what horrible fucking Easter eggs are hidden in my motherboard?”

Shepard knew what else they put in her. That was why she had fled so quickly at a hint of it.

Harria grasped for it. She had enough clues. But she could not tease out the truth.

The Illusive Man and Lawson were both silent. Tears streamed down Lawson's cheeks, but she did not fight or run. She stared Harria down.

“You thought you could just bring someone back from the dead, with no consequences? Guess what - when you die, there's no coming back from that. The only thing worth living for, it turns out you didn't even give me that. So why do you think I'd want to live? What did you think would make me tick? When you make the dead live, what's the only thing they're really after? Any guesses?”

Harria spun and raised her pistol. “Last chance. What else did you put inside me? You know I'll do it.”

Lawson’s lips opened, but she shook her head. “Nothing,” the Illusive Man said.

“I think you get it. The only thing I'm after is a pound of delicious flesh. Find me at the end of the blood trail.” She shot Lawson's head.

She asked Zaaed to help her clean up the body. There were some advantages of having a gun for hire on the team. Maybe they'd order him to try to kill her later, but for now the standing order was to keep her alive.  

Obviously Cerberus knew what she'd done. Jacob would know. EDI would know. There was a chance that the Normandy would be locked to her when she returned from Liara's.

But it was a slight one. She hadn't gotten anything out of them, except that the transmitter was easily findable. They hadn't told her what Shepard was hiding from. With no more substantial information, Harria remained their ally. She would still go to the Collector base. And that was all they'd wanted from her to begin with.

So the Normandy would remain while Harria hunted down a surgeon to get the damn antenna out of her back. 

It occurred to Harria that Mordin had, in fact, directly referred to the lack of what he called an “interface.” Did Harria only transmit? Or was the system both a transmitter and a receiver? Could Cerberus load new software into her at any time?

Was Mordin an incredible liar? Or did he lack the necessary protocols to tap into her system, leading to the frustration in his voice?

They'd talked about it in the context of reprogramming. But the system, transmitter/receiver, might tie into more than just a video feed. Harria imagined herself as the small extension of EDI, feeding the ship computer information, using the computer's power to process on her own software, and receiving the data back from the computer at instant speed. She might be crippled by losing it.

It was a risk she had to take. She could not trust Cerberus with access to every moment of her life. She could not touch Liara knowing that they could see it, and probably hear it and feel it too. And she could not live without Liara.

* * *

There was a real question of whether Zaeed was the right person to bring with her in the hurried hour and a half before meeting Liara. Ultimately, convenience ruled all else. Zaeed was here, cooperative for now, and ultimately Zaeed was expendable.

The first doctor had a nice clinic not far from Liara's office. He had several guards.

Harria slung her leg over the lab chair across from the salarian’s desk, leaning forward against the back of the chair. “You're going to scan me and find a transmitter/receiver, and destroy it. I'm going to pay you 2 million credits. If you kill me or if I find out the transmitter is not disabled, you’ll go the same way as your guards.”

The doctor agreed hurriedly, and Harria was pleased to note that Zaeed kept his gun out while the doctor scanned her body in his surgery room.

When Harria looked at the doctor, though, obvious signs of sadness had obscured his face. He shook his head. “Impossible. The device is interwoven into the core hardware. To even sever it would kill you.”

“You're not going to take two mill to try?” Harria’s body was on fire.

“At the threat of death if I fail? No.”

“I think you're confused,” Harria told him. “You die if you don't try, too. I can't have the galaxy knowing I'm an active transmitter. I'm not aiming to get hacked.”

“Homicidal,” the doctor muttered to himself. “I have security cameras. Illium’s law enforcement does not take kindly to murder.”

“That is a nice thought.” Harria hopped onto the surgery table. “Do it. Let's go.”

The doctor looked between Zaeed’s gun and Harria's back. “It. It is too dangerous. You are asking me to kill you.”

“Fine. I believe you can't do it.” Harria shot him in the head, and then nodded to the door. “Next one will be better.”

The second was a drell doctor. Halfway through their conversation, he received a message on his omni-tool. News of the first doctor had spread.

He fled. Unfortunately, she'd already described the situation in excessive detail. Her bullet beat his body to the door.

Twenty minutes until she was supposed to meet Liara. Harria considered asking Liara for another hour, but she was already cutting it too close. She'd meet Liara. Maybe they'd go directly to the Shadow Broker's lair, maybe not. Either way, there'd be another day for this.

And another mercenary. Zaeed was expecting her betrayal, but Harria dogged him through the streets in her cloak, shooting him until his shield failed, and until he fell. She cut his neck with her knife to be sure he was dead.

* * *

Harria and Kelly Chambers found police and a Spectre at Liara's apartment, and two big bullet holes in the window. Liara and Adiva were gone.

Harria went instantly into the bedroom, fishing under the nightstand. There was a hidden compartment there, and in the compartment there was a data disc.

Liara was in a hurry. Rather than a message, it was a vid, recorded off her omni-tool. _Dracon Trade Center._ The vid didn't have a visual on Liara, but she must have had Adiva in her arms. _After_ being shot at? She'd stayed at the apartment?

Would Liara have gone directly to meet him? Where was Adiva? Harria felt an echo of her dream. She could almost hear Adiva crying.

Tela Vasir was typing into her omni-tool, and Harria bent to type, too. The text was already there. _I will meet you there but where is Adiva?_ She clicked _send_.

No interface with her hardware existed, but she transmitted. She realized that she'd always known, in the back of her mind, that she could write into her omni-tool without typing. To have it happen accidentally was jarring.

Kelly Chambers was looking at her when she looked up. “Come on, I have a car,” Vasir said.

Harria sighed sharply. Liara would have taken care of Adiva. She had to trust her. “All right. Kelly, go back to the ship. I've got this.”

They were almost at the Trade Center when the bomb blew out half the floors. By the time they landed, Harria had sent the location to her whole squad. They'd descend.

Vasir said she'd work down the building. Harria checked her pistol. The same one she'd killed Lawson and the doctors with - her only weapon. It was fine.

The fucking building was overrun with mercs. The Shadow Broker’s private army. Harria knew Liara was capable, but she moved quickly. What if Liara had brought Adiva with her? The Shadow Broker also suspected that Liara would survive the blast. How could she not?

Harria slipped through the mercs like a ghost, working her way up the floors. Sekat. She'd downloaded the floor map. His office was on the sixth. She'd reach it before Vasir, but she had to get through more mercs than she did, probably. She wished she had her armor. What had possessed her, not to prepare for combat? Killing Lawson had been too easy. She was too comfortable in Illium. It was lucky that Liara was not. Her paranoia had saved her - had saved their daughter, too. It was impossible to imagine an alternative.

Harria barged into Sekat’s office to find him dead. Vasir was there, on one knee by the salarian. Probably checking for a pulse. Vasir said, “Did you find your friend’s body?”

“You mean this body?” It was Liara, finally. The tightness in Harria's chest loosened. “I doubled back after I left. I saw you break into my apartment.”

Harria laughed. Betrayed from the get-go. It was only fitting.

And so the chase began. With no armor, no sniper rifle, and with Shepard a mote of dust in the back of her mind, Harria truly fought for her life.

She and Liara made a good team. Shepard had never fought with Liara at her side. Liara stayed on the ship, Shepard's damsel in distress. What a mistake that had been. Liara had thought that if she’d come to the Citadel, Shepard might have lived. Harria began to agree with her.

* * *

Adiva laughed to see Harria walk through the door, and Harria dropped to her knees. “My baby,” she exhaled. Of course Advia had been safe. Liara dropped her off at a sitter before going to the trade center. But Harria was not secure in it until she saw Adiva herself.

“Da,” Adiva said, toddling to her.

Harria picked Advia up, resisting the urge to whisper, _I will never hurt you._ She closed her eyes.

They'd leave Advia here. It would be dangerous to bring the Normandy into an installation like the Shadow Broker's. Even on the ship, Adiva would be in danger. Liara had set up her bank account and a responsible financial guardian.

But Liara would go. They would go.

* * *

Harria and Liara were wrapped in each other in the Captain's cabin, mostly clothed - although that was changing quickly. Harria pushed the knowledge of their observers to the back of her mind. How quickly she habituated herself to the idea.

Liara broke their kiss to say, “I need to tell you something. If you don't want to help me, I understand. Thank you for all your help so far.”

Harria nodded, catching her breath. She settled back, confident that Liara could say nothing that would deter her.

“I was angry at you for dying, and for taking my mother with you. I was angry with you for leaving me behind, so that I couldn't save you. I knew I couldn't find anyone who could replace you, but hadn't fully decided to keep Adiva.”

“Yeah?” Harria said.

“I wanted to know what happened, how Shepard died. So I invited Kaiden to my hotel in the Citadel. I - I didn't plan it. But, Harria -”

Harria stood, crossing her arms over her body. She walked away from the bed.

“That's not all,” Liara said behind her. “I have to tell you. A few months later, I - met Feron. I never melded with either of them. It was just something to distract me. I was destroyed, Harria, and it did not seem to be something that would hurt anyone else. I didn't know that you would come back to me. I'm so sorry.”

Harria walked to the corner and closed her eyes, resting her forehead against it. Liara came up behind her, putting her hand on Harria's shoulder. She asked to meld.

Harria pushed her back explosively. Liara released her shoulder, saying that she'd leave Harria to think. She kept repeating her earlier words. Harria heard without processing.

It didn't matter, anyway. Liara cheated every day on Shepard. Harria had no claim to Liara. Liara could do whatever she wanted to do. Shepard was dead.


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THIS IS YOUR RAPE WARNING. Rape is happening in this scene. I am posting separately in case anyone who's reading would like to skip this scene.
> 
> Sorry for the consecutive posts.
> 
> This fic is making me super depressed.

Harria sat in the shadows and watched her. She was gorgeous, quick and persuasive. Harria could see the network coalesce around her, extensions of her arms, a web of connections. Liara could do this. She already had.

And Cerberus would know about it. The electrical storm had likely blocked Harria's connection to the Normandy, but the moment she stepped aboard, the stream would transmit from the antenna that ran along her titanium spine. Cerberus would know everything.

Harria considered telling Liara. Liara could scan her here, find the antenna. She was a doctor. She could sever it, disabling the stream. Preventing this final betrayal.

Harria decided she would tell Liara. To stop herself from spying on Liara on Cerberus's behalf - that was worth anything, even if Liara found a way to stop Harria from going through Omega 4. This was worth it.

She stood and saundered to Liara, wrapping her arms around her shoulders. There were times that Harria appreciated the physical advantage of her bulk over Liara. “I think we have unfinished business.”

Liara turned partially around, and Harria switched off the interface board they stood before. She took Liara's hands in her left one and guided them against the dark board. And then she slowly unfastened that beautiful space suit, piece by piece. She slid down the pants and pinched Liara's nipple, and then she pulled Liara's hands higher so that her chest was against the cold board.

Liara sighed and arched, offering her backside to Harria, and Harria ground against her and let her hand caress her thighs. She could feel the warmth between Liara's legs, inviting, already. She wished for a strap-on. Something big, to force inside Liara deeply, to fuck her raw. She wanted Liara fiercely, harshly. She wanted to dominate her, have her helpless and begging. “Ask for it,” she ground out.

“Please, give me your fingers. Harria, love me.”

Not exactly what Harria wanted to hear, but she pushed Liara's panties to the side and thrust her fingers inside, raking them along Liara's front wall, and then thrusting again, deeply. Liara had a part of her that was too deep for Harria's fingers to reach. Harria sometimes could feel Liara longing for that deepness, during the meld. Of course she knew how to take a man. She knew what it was like to be filled with a man’s cum, dripping out of her. Harria clenched her jaw against the bile and hate, tightening her grip around Liara's wrists. Her fingers sought that deepness.

“Not so hard,” Liara said, and Harria grunted and pulled out entirely, pressing her hips against Liara's wetness, forcing Liara against the blank interface panel. “Harria, calm down, you're scaring me.”

Liara tried to turn around, and Harria pushed her down with her hand. “Stay there.”

Liara nodded, but she offered the meld. Harria almost rejected it, but she _did_ want that closeness. She wanted to own Liara.

 _You do own me,_ Liara said though the meld.

“Show me how you took their dicks. Did you suck them off?”

Liara pulled away slightly, and then she rushed back. _I love you, darling. Please let me take this pain away. I knew this would hurt you. I never thought I would ever have you back, but it was selfish of me, and I'm sorry._

Harria's fingers found her ridges, and Liara whimpered. Her thumb went inside Liara, and Liara rocked back into it. The sensation barely reached Harria, even through the meld. Liara caressed her with words. _This is what I want. This is all I ever wanted. You're the only one I would ever trust to do this. You're the only one I've ever melded with in sex._

Liara was rocking into her hand, making soft needy sounds. She was overflowing wetness into Harria's hand, coating her fingers, and Harria rolled her fingers over her ridges and thrust her thumb into her. Harria wanted to fill her, to reach her deepest part and satisfy her - to be everything.

 _You're everything, my love._ __Liara rippled around her thumb, grasping, and her palpus tasted her fingers. Harria's hips twitched forward into her body.

 _Then take me deeper,_ Harria said, and Liara wrapped around her and plunged down.

They found the place they'd gone with Adiva, and Harria pulled Liara deeper. She was coming apart, and still it wasn't enough, not close enough. They swam in each other - each particle danced with another, meeting in place. _Stop._ Liara coalesced, pulled upward. Harria reached into her chest and grabbed her heart. _Harria, STOP._

She yanked Liara's heart as hard as she could. Liara came apart between her fingers. Harria met her and overwhelmed her. She wrapped herself around Liara's smallest pieces, and then inside her, into her core. Leaving an impression.

 _Welcome to hell, Liara,_ she said. There was blood on her hands, on her face. She was dripping in it.

They came out of the meld, and Harria pulled her fingers out of Liara. She was numb with horror.

She put her face against Liara's back, against the hard plates of her envirosuit. “I'm sorry,” she said. “I didn't know -”

“Please get off me,” Liara said.

Harria did as she asked, blindly walking a few places away, and then turning back. “I'm sorry,” she said again. “So sorry.”

“You did know.” Liara's suit was back on, but she still faced away. “You know.”

Every part of Harria was dead. Surely her blood was not moving. How could her heart remain beating, with such darkness inside?

“Will you leave now?”

Harria went, steps leaden. She saw Feron as she left, and could not remember if she shot him in her imagination, or if she actually did shoot him. It didn't matter.

“Set a course for the Thorne system,” she told Joker. “We're getting that fucking IFF if it kills me.”

Joker said, “You're the boss,” and then he looked up at her. “Holy shit.” Harria looked down at him wordlessly. “Shepard, your eyes.”


	16. Chapter 16

Harria and Kelly were sitting across the table in Harria's cabin. She fidgeted with a glass of water, her hands trembling, and Kelly waited. 

Finally, Harria said, “I need help.” Repeating the words she'd used to bring Kelly into the cabin. 

“What happened?”

Harria opened her mouth, but nothing came out. She closed it again.

Finally she said, “You know - well, have you ever melded with an asari?”

“Once,” Kelly said, waiting.

“So, the whole thing is trust. You can bring each other anywhere. You can have bodies, or not. You can share memories. It's almost impossible to lie, or… probably impossible. You can keep things from them but only by not thinking about them. And that's just on the surface. The deeper you go, the stronger it is. It feels - like nothing in this world, to meld with Liara, because she loves me, and um, trusts me, and we've gone so deep together, and every time it has been so good.” Harria opened her mouth wide, and her jaw popped tension. “The deeper you go, the closer it gets to the mating meld. But until you fully disappear into each other, it isn't. And - at that point Liara didn't have control over the meld anymore.”

Harria looked down at her hands. They shook uncontrollably. They hadn't stopped, ever since she'd had Legion modify her transmitter/receiver. “I left a part of myself in her, and she didn't want it. She told me not to do it.”

Kelly smiled softly, but her eyes were serious. She waited for Harria to continue. 

“I know the meld can hurt as much as it can feel good. Anything that can feel that good can hurt you just as much. I know - what it was like for Liara, to lose - Shepard's baby. Before Adiva. She didn't want that to happen again. Right now -” 

Harria stopped, fought her own throat, fought for stability. She was spinning out, spinning toward disaster. It was almost over. The IFF was almost installed. “Pretty soon we're all going to be dead,” she said. “Liara's going to have a part of me in her even when I'm gone.”

“Why do you feel that way?” Kelly said softly. 

“Don't fucking go there with me,” Harria said, temper flaring. She stood and slammed her open palm against the wall, and then she leaned into it, staring at the ground. Her fingernails rattled against the metal. “Jacob's about to shoot me in the back. Jack’s more of a nutcase than I am. Garrus, Samara, and Thane are the only sane ones left. You think three people can take on an entire Reaper base? If you do you're -” She spun, looking at Kelly. “I followed all the Illusive Man’s orders. I've done everything I was supposed to do. Maybe killed a few more people than I should have, but fuck, I wasn't dealt a very strong hand to begin with.” She turned back to the wall. “I don't want to do this.”

“And Grunt?”

“He's gone. Everyone's fucking gone. The colonists? This is a suicide mission. Tell the Illusive Man.” Harria felt part of herself strain toward the answer. “Tell him to sic me off this.”

“We are all still here, ready to follow. If you can't do it, Shepard, nobody can.” 

Harria placed her hand back on the wall, flattening it, watching it tremble. “Get out of here,” she said finally. 

“Will you talk to Liara?” Kelly asked, standing. 

“She doesn't want to talk to me,” Harria said. She'd kept sending flowers to her apartment on Illium. A lily, every day, and a note with two words.  _ I'm sorry. _ “She's got Tali… and Adiva.” Harria's precious dove. She'd never see her again. “I'm just a machine.”

Kelly hesitated, and Harria said, “Please leave. Don't worry about it.” She looked up through copper hair, a cheap dye job. “I'll still do it. It's my… it's my purpose, Kelly. This is what I'm here to do.” 

Kelly nodded, and the door closed with a snap behind her. Harria lay her face against the wall and waited. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All right, people. It's been fun, while it lasted. I tried, I really did... I can't really see the light at this point. Sorry if I can't get it together for ME 3...
> 
> Hope everyone's enjoying Andromeda!


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just curious about the reaction... I played like 5 hr in and then lost the save... Unsure if I will continue.

It took a long time for Shepard to find her way back into her body. Harria hadn't been able to imagine living after what happened. That… helped.

But the main thing that brought Shepard back from the dead was that Harria's job was done. She had been made with just one prime objective: to defeat the Collectors, no matter the cost. Her objective drove her into the Collector base, and when she emerged she slowly dissipated, leaving only a voice that trembled, like Shepard's shaking hand, resolving into action only under duress or extreme emotion.

When the Reapers came to destroy Earth, it was Shepard who faced them. Who fought them, even with a hand that still trembled.

She'd kept the cheap dye job, though it clashed horribly with her dark skin and those ugly glowing red eyes. She let the Alliance piece together the holes that Cerberus had left in her body, although her skin and bones still ached. And the Alliance confirmed something that Harria had only hoped was true: Legion’s modifications to her transmitter/receiver had worked. She wasn't wired into Cerberus any more.

In combat, some part of her revelled in movement. She hadn't felt the kickback of a pistol in nearly two years. She wanted the fight. She'd always been there for the fight, even with Harria in control. She'd always known the fight was coming. And while she had dreaded - hated - being compelled by Harria's programming… this  _ body’s  _ programming, she had never considered actually retiring from active duty.

So when Anderson sent her to the Council, in full control of the Normandy, she returned with a sense of normalcy. Harria had spent hours each day staring through the walls of the Captain's quarters. They were familiar to Shepard, too.

She'd had only a few hours to get comfortable in Harria's combat suit before they landed on Mars. And there, clambering through an air vent, came Shepard's worst dream and best nightmare.

Liara’s eyes slid over Shepard's. She addressed Kaiden. “The Alliance?” she said at first. “Thank the goddess.”

And then Liara looked again. “Major Alenko?” Her eyes skipped back to Shepard. “... Harria?”

Liara flinched away, as Shepard lurched forward, completely beside herself.

She drew short at Liara's pistol, aimed at her skull. “Cerberus,” Liara finally decided. Her finger tightened on the trigger.

“No! Not at all,” Shepard managed. Hee gun was held loosely, and her trembling hand barely held its grasp. “We're with the Alliance.”

James was holding his assault rifle aimed at Liara, and Kaiden moved forward to tap his shoulder down. “She's with us,” he told James, and James reluctantly lowered his weapon.

Liara's pistol stayed where it was, a perfect headshot on Shepard, to follow the two she'd just delivered to the Cerberus militia.

“Liara -” Harria burst out, and Shepard dampened her down.

Liara said, “Give me one reason I should not shoot you now.”

“We came to find you,” Kaiden said. His voice was a faint ghostlike sound against the ringing in Shepard's ears. “We were sent by Hackett. Order was to retrieve the information needed to stop the Reapers.”

Liara reluctantly tipped her gun up, and disengaged. “I think I know what he was talking about.”

Kaiden nodded shortly, and she turned to him. “I've discovered plans for a Prothean device, one that could wipe out the Reapers.”

“Hallelujah,” James said. “Finally someone who’s got answers.”

_ He's her type,  _ Harria whispered.  _ She likes some muscle on them. _

Shepard stayed silent. They were still standing, nearly frozen in the confrontation.

Kaiden didn't know that Shepard knew he fucked Liara. He didn't know - more importantly - that Harria had raped Liara after finding that out. Kaiden was innocent.

Liara was innocent. It was Shepard alone who was responsible for what had happened. Shepard had let Harria’s jealousy consume her… If she hadn't allowed Harria control at all... If Harria had not felt like a cheap second to Shepard, and a cheap third (and fourth) to the men Liara had bedded after her love affair with Shepard…

There was no use in regrets. Shepard had not been strong enough to take control during the moments that mattered. And Harria's decisions were Shepard's to make peace with. She could not extricate herself from Harria. It wouldn't be fair to, and it would only undermine all the progress she had made 

In every possible way, this situation was Shepard's fault. And she hated herself for every terrible moment that had forced them into this situation - a place where Liara would as likely try to kill her, as accept that she was once again, hopelessly hoping to help Liara at last.

Or use her, at least. What was the difference?

Shepard closed her eyes and let Kaiden speak for her. Kaiden could explain what they were here for. Maybe for Kaiden, Liara would fight.

Ten minutes later, they were in a shuttle to the Prothean archives on Mars. Shepard hadn't spoken yet, which was probably for the best.

“I should have realized,” Liara said when she found out how Cerberus got into Mars Station. “I should have known that she was the problem. I was just so focused on trying to find a way to stop the Reapers.”

Liara turned abruptly away from the console.

The sentiment boiled out of Shepard - Harria - no, Shepard, before she could stop it. “Stopping the Reapers is the only thing we should be focused on. Don't be ashamed of that.”

And Liara, too, spoke as if there was nobody left in the room but them. She did not look at Shepard. But she said, “What if these are our last days, and we spend them scurrying around, trying to fix a problem we can't fix.”

She was talking about their daughter. Or… daughters? She could not help herself but to hope that Liara had chosen to keep Harria's impression. It had been...

It had been a nightmare. Shepard didn't know what to think. Was that hope hers at all? Was it selfish? Was it Harria's hope, or Shepard's own?

“Well, there's nothing left for me,” she said, as softly as her voice could manage. It was still booming, commanding. She could not moderate the inflections in her tone.

And Liara turned to look at her. “There is plenty,” is all Liara said, before the door opened and there was no option of talking any more.

The tram station. Shepard stayed focused on the only objective that made any sense anymore.

And at the end of it, Liara was on the Normandy. She was there, among all the options… all the possibilities, Shepard had Liara on her ship.

They were flying to the Citadel. Not illium, but… the Citadel. Where Shepard had died the first time. Where she'd given everything up to Harria.

Where Kaiden’s nearly lifeless body might be saved.

Liara was in one of the cabins. Shepard had not slept in at least two days, but she felt like she hadn't been awake in years. Three years, since the assault on the Collectors’ base? Or five years, since Harria had taken control, since Harria had awoken at a Cerberus installation without any memory of Shepard's life?

There was no analogue for this, a foreign creature which had taken over Shepard's autonomy… had taken everything Shepard cared about, and turned it to dust in her iron grip. 

They were at the Citadel. Kaiden was taken to the med ward. Shepard's hand shook as she addressed the Council.

Liara smoothly broke in, almost like they'd planned it. She gave the Council far more detail on the weapon than she'd given Shepard. She'd given Shepard essentially nothing at all. 

And Shepard pledged to support the construction of the weapon, as if it was something she could decide. Grandstanding, politicking, organising…. It all felt far too familiar.

As they turned away from the unreceptive Council, Liara made eye contact with her for the first time.   
  
And she let herself hope.


	18. Chapter 18

Liara had asked Harria to consider trying to re-integrate her personalities. Harria had refused, mainly because she had known that Shepard hated the programming that Cerberus had left in her body. It was better to think of the body as Harria's. By allowing Harria to maintain control, Shepard protected herself from the ablife, the second life, forced upon her. 

Now, Shepard had her own poltergeist. Harria reminded Shepard eagerly of the many moments with Liara that had been hers, and hers alone. The meld after losing Grunt and Mordin in the trap on the Collectors’ ship. The times that Liara told Harria that she was  _ enough. _ Liara had loved Harria  _ enough _ , and Liara was the only thing in the world that Harria lived for. It was hard to reconcile with the love Shepard had briefly experienced with Liara, before she died, but it was no less real. In fact, Harria had spent much more time with Liara than Shepard had. Harria was the “father” Adiva knew - not Shepard. Liara was Harria's first thought, and now that she had faded, Liara became her only thought.

The rest of this new life was easy. Being a soldier again, living on Earth… the poltergeist didn't mess those up too badly. But Liara was not easy. In Liara's presence, Harria screamed to be heard, to live again, clawing like a ghoul out of the earth and reaching for Liara with desperation.

Shepard spent the journey to Palavan in the mess hall. She still could not sleep, so she refamiliarized herself with the crew. Many were Alliance, from the old Normandy. She knew them better than Harria did.

Others, like Joker, were Cerberus. They had turned themselves back in to the Alliance when Harria returned to Earth. Her crew had felt mingled triumph and horror after what they'd done to the colony world. Harria had felt nothing at all. She'd had already begun fading by the time they reached Earth.

Shepard was not much of a talker, but she knew the crew appreciated having access to her. And… asari ate, too. She waited and waited for Liara to come.

Finally she gave up. Liara must have been asking someone to bring her food, in the late Lawson's office. She must busy doing bookish research-like things, working on the weapon she had told the Council that humanity would construct against the Reapers.

It was just an hour before landing, and Shepard had her combat suit on. She was at the firing range, bursting with impatience.

The Normandy had left Earth with the people who happened to be on the ship at the time. It was no carefully groomed crew. Sure, she'd bring James along with her to the Turian moon… but who else? Courtney? The girl was shy and a weak psychic at best. Ralph was untested in every possible way.

They needed to succeed. Harria had seen Liara fight. Shepard needed her.

Or at least, it was as robust an excuse as she could find. She practically ran from the firing range, pausing only when she reached the door that led to Liara. She rubbed sweating palms on teflon.

There were a thousand questions that Shepard could not ask. She couldn't ask about Harria's impression. She couldn't ask about her daughter. Could she ask how Liara had been? Should it be purely casual?

Should she ask… to meld? It had worked so well for Harria, when she first met Liara. It was the way that Harria won Liara over. It was also the way that Harria betrayed her.

Liara had not explained her reasons for staying on the Normandy. Except that she was still helping examine the weapon she'd discovered. It seemed like something she could do at the Shadow Broker's base. What about their daughter? Where was Adiva?

The door opened as Shepard hesitated in front of it. Liara was just on the other side of the door. Liara's liquid gaze captured hers, and Shepard could not speak.

“You will bring me with you to rescue the Turian prince,” Liara told her. Shepard nodded dumbly. Liara said, “We won't convince the Council to act in concert by hiding away. The first step is this prince.”

Shepard nodded again, and Liara stepped closer. Her scent filled Shepard's head. 

“Don’t mistake this for goodwill, Harria. If circumstances were less dire, I would have lived the rest of my life without speaking to you again.”

“I understand,” Shepard croaked. “You're right. I deserve it.”

Liara’s eyes flicked down to Shepard's lips. “I trust you with my life, but I will never trust you with my heart, or my body, again. I can see the hope in your eyes. Do  _ not _ hope to have me back, Harria Shepard. You will never have me again.”

Shepard nodded stiffly. Her body bowed under Liara's quiet, simmering fury.

But throughout the operation on the Turian moon, Liara kept giving Shepard strange looks. Once, the look was so pointed that Shepard raised an eyebrow at her.  _ What?  _ Liara turned away.

When they found Garrus, Shepard asked that Liara go back to the ship. Liara actually touched her elbow, tipping her head away from the group. They rounded the metal body of one of the temporary buildings of the base, out of eyesight from the rest of the group.

Shepard switched to a direct channel. “Liara?” she breathed.

“Your hand is shaking. Your eyes are red-rimmed, and you are pale.” Liara said. “Are you…”

“OK to fight? Uh, yeah.” Her aim wasn't off. It was just when they stopped that she trembled. Like now. 

“Did something happen on Earth?” Liara asked with concern. “Or at the Collector base?”

Shepard opened her mouth, sighed slightly. The truth would out. “Cerberus wired me up with a live data stream. Video, audio. When I found out, I asked a friend to remove it. There are… some side effects.”

Liara’s brow wrinkled, and Shepard hurried to say, “I'm also off their drugs. It's been a long, slow recovery on Earth with the Alliance. I'm sorry that I'm not as great a soldier as I had been, but now at least my body is my own.” A dam had broken, releasing a stream of clipped, run-together words. “I spent half my time on Earth in therapy. And maybe there's someone more stable for this job, but unfortunately they're not here. I'm the one here. Really, if you want to leave, you should. I've been thinking about what you said about our last days, and yes, we need you, but Adiva needs you, too -” Liara interrupted before Shepard could finish.

“I will not give up on Earth. I saw the news vids. I truly believe that if we allow humanity to fall, the rest of the galaxy will be quick to follow. Don't forget the Collectors. Humans will be next, and it will not be pretty.”

Shepard squeezed the grip of her pistol tightly. Where was Adiva? She noticed that there were tears on her cheeks. 

“I am afraid - Cerberus was on Mars - I am afraid that the Shadow Broker is compromised. Is Adiva -”

“Adiva’s hideout is safe,” Liara barked. She pulled back her shoulders and stepped back, and only then did Shepard notice how close they had been standing, how open Liara's stance had been. Liara closed off, and the loss stung.

Maybe it was a last volley, but Shepard could not help herself. “How can you still want to fight to save humanity, after what you - after what I did to you?”

Liara’s eyes turned icy. “It is simple. You are a monster. I am not.” Liara turned away, and the comm cut. 

Shepard bit her tongue and turned to the fight. She lined up shot after shot, a taste like acid in her mouth. Blood would be better. She dodged the monstrous Reaper beasts, activating her cloak to escape their clutches, reviving Garrus and James again and again. They could not become invisible. She wondered if it would be better for them to stay down, out of the fight, and then the Reaper bullets bit through her shields again and she remembered that she had a team for a reason.

At the end of the fight, she hopped down into the pit and pulled James to his feet. He was staggering. He had been unequal to the Reaper beasts. 

And then they turned to address the Turian prince. 

 

When they returned to the Normandy, Shepard was stumbling with exhaustion. She stood in front of Liara's door, her gloves and helmet stripped off but the rest of her suit filthy with creeps and gore. 

She leaned forward and put her hands on the door without activating it. She leaned into it, squeezing her eyes. She was unspeakably exhausted. She had slept only a handful of hours since the attack on Earth, three days now. And she burned, deep in her bones. Her skin crawled. 

Liara could heal her. If only she would.

Shepard remembered the first hours after Adiva’s birth, those long melds with mother and daughter and Harria tossed into the mix, totally unprepared but equally eager. Harria had felt just like her daughter, completely helpless and full of need, but warm and cared-for. Liara had been there for both daughter and mate. She had always been there for Harria. Even at the end, Liara had tried to soothe Harria's distress, without fully knowing what caused it.

Liara should never have melded with her. She should never have invited Harria into her family. And she should not comfort Shepard now. Shepard had lived for three years without Harria and without Liara. Surely she could keep on, now.

She punched the door release and stumbled into Liara's room.

The lights were low, but Liara was sitting at her desk, nearly professorial. She stood slightly when the door opened.

Liara stood straight as Shepard approached. “Did you discover something new?”

“Liara,” Shepard breathed, and Liara looked at her more closely. “No, it's - it's not that.”

“Is something wrong?” Liara was still concerned.

Shepard licked her lips. “I - I haven't slept since the attack on Earth. When I close my eyes, I have nightmares. A child - crying -” she pressed her lips together. “My therapist died in the attack on Earth. There's nobody here to talk to. I am - I can't even think, I'm so tired.”

Liara watched her fumble for words, expressionless.

“Please. I just don't want to be alone.”

“You have a crew for that. It is not my job to take care of you,” Liara said. “If I am distracting you -”

“No,” Shepard said quickly. “Do you remember the lake, you know, when the crew took shore leave without permission and you took me up the mountain?” Her fists were clenched and she was straining toward Liara, lips twisting together in the vain attempt to prevent herself from crying, again. “Liara, I - that - I am supposed to remember something that makes me want to live, and that is the thing. That, and I want to meet my daughter.” She wasn't supposed to talk about herself as if Harria was a different person. It wouldn't help integrate, but sometimes she could not help it.

Shepard could not read the expression on Liara's face, but Liara did freeze for a long moment. “You said that -” Liara paused. “Is this a trick?” 

“Huh?” Shepard was confused. Had something happened that Harria had not let her see? Everything tilted a little sideways. What if it had all been a fever dream? Or, what if Harria's memories - what if she'd altered them? What if Harria had altered Shepard's memories? She was a stranger in her own mind.

“You're saying that you are Shepard.”

“Oh,” Shepard breathed. “Right. I told you I was in therapy.”

“Harria thought she left you on the Collector ship, after she - after you were put in that pod.” Liara had circled the desk, and her eyes were wide.

“She - as - no,” Shepard said. “She's nearly gone now, but I think I remember everything she did. After we blew up the Collectors, and got rid of the transmitter, I was able to handle this body. And she didn't want it any more, so I've - I've been re-integrating.” She used her therapist's words, formerly Liara's.

“Was she blocking you?”

“No,” Shepard said. It was important that she be perfectly truthful. “I needed her to help me, while I was under the control of the Illusive Man. If I had been stronger, I could have stopped her. I - I wasn't part of your melds, but I - I knew she was really - unstable -”

“Shepard,” Liara breathed. She sighed and closed her eyes. “I had hoped, but when you apologized…”

“I have brought you nothing but pain, Liara. Your life would be cake if it weren't for me.”

Liara breathed out. “Come here,” she whispered, and Shepard stepped forward into her arms. She let her cheek rest on Liara’s temple and closed her eyes as her body finally, mercifully relaxed. 

Liara released her, and it was an act of will that allowed Shepard to step out of the hug. 

“I - I need time to think.” Liara searched Shepard's face. 

Shepard nodded, and closed her eyes. “Thank you,” she whispered. She stumbled to her cabin and slept propped up in the corner, her combat gear on and the memory of Liara so close that she felt like she could reach out and close her hand around Liara's calf, if Liara was sitting, as she had a million times before, at this desk.

Shepard woke to the sound of a child crying. She stumbled upright and tried to find the source of the sound. As wakefulness exerted itself, the sound faded until it was just a ringing in her ears.

Was it the children on Earth that she heard? Was it Adiva, who was now lost to her? Or the child she had conceived with Liara as a means of revenge for Liara's imagined breach of faithfulness? Harria's daughter. No, Shepard's daughter, because they were the same person now.

Shepard took her combat suit off and showered quickly. Then she lay with her eyes open on the cot, searching the featureless ceiling for a clue.

She'd thought Harria was pitiful. But Shepard without Harria was moreso. When had Shepard broken? She'd felt badly for James, when he was beaten up so badly by the Reaper beasts. He hadn't died, though, and Shepard had. It had been a miracle that they made it out of the Collector base, a miracle really accomplished for the sake of her crew. Harria had already checked out by that point. She hadn't cared if she lived or died.

Anyway, maybe it was OK to be pitiful. Shepard had been so strong, but she'd broken long ago.


End file.
